HeartStorm (HeartFast Series Book 3) (28 page)

            "Fuck!"

            The baby moved slightly in his arms, but remained silent.

            This door was not an option, but there was one more way in. "I got to get to the other side of the bay."

            A reverberating boom nearly deafened him. They were closer, and it was evident from the location of the sound that they were between him and the other entry.

            Laying the baby on the floor, he searched the wall beside the doorway for the cover to the access box. Finding it, he pried it off then pulled out the pistol. Two shots set on high melted the control box, and the panel popped open a couple of inches. A hard shove opened the doorway even further. Porith scooped up the baby, who remained limp and silent, and held it against his shoulder as he squeezed into the landing bay.

            His footsteps echoed with the vast room as he tried to get his bearings. Here, the darkness hampered him. Although he knew every centimeter of the bunker, he could tell the bay had been turned around, most likely during the ascent. He needed some way to get his bearings.

            The ceiling screeched as it was wrenched from its moorings. Suddenly, moonlight filtered into the room, and a black shadow drifted downward, stopping when it hit the floor.

            Porith tried to back up, when the bay was flooded with intense light. Overhead, a voice taunted. "Time to settle up, crag hole!"

            Shielding his eyes with his free hand, he squinted at the figure coming toward him. StarLight advanced like an avenging black goddess.

            "You better stop right there if you want this child back," he warned her, holding the baby tighter against him.

            StarLight paused, her eyes riveted on the tiny figure lying still and silent. "What's wrong with her? What have you done to my baby!" She raised her hands toward him, then hesitated. Porith grinned. She wouldn't dare to attack him as long as he had possession of the infant.

            "I have to give you Guardians credit. It didn't take you as long as I thought it would to find me. What, may I ask, was my downfall?"

            "You took my daughter," she declared with undisguised venom. "Give her back to me, Porith." She turned her palms up in a mute plea.

            He didn't move. "How many of you are there?"

            A screech of metal upon metal filled the air as someone forced his way through the door he'd just come through, and a huge wall of a man emerged into the light. "Enough, gath slime. Quit stalling and give her the baby." Behind him, Porith could see two more figures making their way in to join him.

            He had nowhere to go, but he refused to surrender. Not now. Not after all those countless days of preparation and planning.

            A movement at the corner of his eye caught his attention, and Porith glanced back at the woman who had taken another step toward him. Her face was a mask of fury.

            "Give me back my baby," she demanded in a tone that promised a universe of hurt if he didn't comply.

            He reacted without thinking, snatching the pistol from his pocket, to place the muzzle against the baby's head. StarLight's reaction was instantaneous.

            "Gods! No!"

            Porith didn't have to check to know the weapon was set at its highest setting, but he couldn't reset it. Not here, with the Guardians watching him.
Maybe that was a good thing
, he surmised.

            "You're going to let me get into that space pod and leave," he told them, his hand unwavering as he nudged the infant's head with the weapon.

            "You're already dead to us," another voice intoned. Hunter stepped forward until he was between the others and StarLight. "Let us have her, and we'll show you Guardian justice. But if you kill our daughter, you will never see the inside of a tribunal chamber." The man meant every word he spoke.

            Porith blinked. Master Hunter was giving him an ultimatum? Why?
Why not take me prisoner? I know what the guy can do, so why isn't he trying to mentally manipulate me, or grab me from inside that invisible...

            The answer hit him like a prayer come true. The Guardian couldn't. Somehow, he'd either lost his powers, or something was preventing him from using them.

            A smile eased onto his face. That something had to do with this planet. Probably with all the newest force fields and security grids he'd paid good cred to have installed.

            "What's the matter, Master Hunter? Can't appear from out of nowhere to grab me? Is that why you're backing off? Been hit with a big dose of super power impotence?" Porith dropped the smile and hitched the baby higher up onto his shoulder to where the pistol was firmly pressed against the back of the infant's head. "Let me go, and the baby lives."

            The wall-sized man Porith now remembered as being called Bruiser sneered. "If you think we'd believe that for a sec—"

            A noise came from behind him. Too late, Porith realized they had diverted his attention in order for more Guardians to approach him from the alternate entry into the bay. Pivoting around, he aimed his weapon at the shadowy figure standing in the doorway, and fired as screams rent the air. Something hard and heavy slammed into his back. A flash of intense pain bolted up his spine and fried his nerve endings, and his body went numb. His pistol dropped from unfeeling fingers as he pitched forward. A figure dove past him to grab the infant before it hit the floor.

            At the last second there was no impact. Opening his eyes, Porith found himself rising higher and higher into the night sky as the figures below him shrank from view. The last thing he saw was the bane of his existence lifting her arms toward him, as if in benediction, before he passed out from lack of oxygen.

            His heart stopped beating long before his body plunged headfirst into his specially-ordered artificial sun.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Fulfilled

            Getting to his feet, Provoker carried the still infant over to where Star stood in frozen horror, and gently laid the girl in her mother's arms. She was so thin, so frail, and tinier than Star remembered. The baby's head lolled against her breast, the eyes closed as if in sleep. Frantically, Star raised her up and tried to breathe life back into the infant as she begged her daughter to live.

            "Come on, Callie. Be a good girl. Live for me. Live! Callie!"

            Behind her, Hunter clutched her shoulders as he peered down at the baby. Like his wife, tears coursed down his cheeks as he whispered a prayer.     

            "Please...by all the gods... Wake up, Callie."

            He moved around to take over moving light puffs of air into the infant's lungs, all the while rubbing the cold little legs and feet and arms that didn't move, didn't react.

            "Udo." Star choked, and her face enflamed. "Udo."

            "Hush. Have faith. Come on, sweet baby. Breathe!"

            A warmth began to thread its way from the base of her throat. Once it reached her chest, it blossomed, until a pale, milky-white light started to emanate from the crystal. Star glanced up to see the same glow coming from his half of the onyx stone, now a sparkling white as the light grew stronger and brighter.

            A voice tickled inside her head. A child's voice, yet not a child. It wanted her to bend over the infant. To let the warm white light bathe the baby in its essence. In its purity.

            Star obeyed, just as Hunter lifted the child higher in his arms and touch his wife's forehead with his own. For several long seconds the light grew less opaque, until it was almost as blinding as a sun. Yet the light didn't hurt. If anything, it seemed to feed strength into them. Through them. As they cradled the infant between them, the light wrapped around the tiny form with a cocoon of warmth.

            Not too far away, she knew the other Guardians were watching and praying just like she and Hunter were. They had lost one of their own tonight, but the man responsible for so much bloodshed was gone, and Star knew that, inevitably, she would have to pay for what she'd done. But at that moment, she couldn't think of anything other than trying to bring life back into her daughter's wilted little body.

            The light continued to flow around them, between them. From throat to hands and around the child. Intense, pulsating light. Again, Star swore she heard a child speak inside her head, but this time she recognized Emma's soft little voice. The same little voice that had uttered
Mama
that moment Hunter and the other three Guardians had burst from that wormhole and returned to her time and space.

            Star glanced up at her husband, who wore the same incredulous expression on his face. Before she could ask if he'd heard their unborn daughter, a bit of music chirped aloud. A four-note motif they both recognized. Emma's personal song for her sister.

            The light faded, and Star looked down to see Callie's wide eyes the color of the purple moons of Tonndorr Six staring back at her. The next second, the infant whimpered.

            Star nearly fell to her knees, but was held up by Hunter's strong arms. Clutching the baby to her breast, she felt the little lips hungrily search for milk. With Hunter shielding her, she lowered the neckline of her uniform and gave her daughter a nipple.

            It was evident the baby was famished, but she was too weak to suckle enough to get her fill. No more than a dozen swallows, but it was enough to give her strength to live for her next feeding. Hunter shed his tunic to wrap the child in, then he gave Star a kiss.

            "Stay here."

            She nodded and watched as he went over to where the others remained standing around their fallen comrade as overhead the sun began to rise.

* * *

            Seeker looked up and wiped her face with the sleeve of her uniform. "She never drew her weapon," she informed him, her voice hitching in pain. "She didn't even try to defend herself. She deliberately made herself a target so we could defeat Porith."

            He glanced at the weapon still clipped to Destiny's belt. From where he stood, it was clearly evident she had turned it off before confronting Porith. It had all been for show when she'd taken the pistol for herself, then passed out more weapons to the others. He understood now that the woman never intended on firing it.

            Hunter waited as Challenger lifted Destiny's lifeless body to carry it back to the transport. He fought the sting of tears that threatened to follow those he'd already shed. "She will be given full honors," he whispered. "She will be remembered."

            Seeker placed a hand on his bare arm a moment before she broke down in sobs. "I knew. I knew, but I couldn't tell...anyone." She dropped to the floor, and Hunter and Bruiser knelt beside her as she buried her face in her hands.

            "You knew what?" Bruiser gently asked, his hand patting her back in support.

            It took a moment for the young woman to gather herself. Lifting her flushed and swollen face, she confessed. "Destiny had to fulfill her prophesy. I knew what she planned to do, and I couldn't stop her. I knew I'd watch her d-die. I had to watch. I couldn't stop her. I couldn't tell anyone. I had to let her die."

            "What prophesy are you talking about?" Hunter asked.

            "The prophesy that she would save my baby's life."

            Everyone looked up as Star joined them. The infant lay cuddled, asleep against her mother's warmth, a tiny hand clutching a strand of long, black hair.

            "When Destiny enlisted to become a Guardian, I was determined to shut her down," Star continued. "I thought of her as a charlatan. A fake. That, or someone desperate to become a Guardian, but who had no actual powers. But there were too many things, personal and private things she knew about all of us."

            She looked directly at her husband. "We were suffering that day. Emotionally and mentally. I was angry at the universe. Angry at everything except for this little seed of life I carried inside. That bit of life I thought would be all I would have left of you. I didn't want to believe Destiny, until she promised me she would be instrumental in saving Callie's life. It was then... I don't know how to explain it, but at that moment I saw something in her eyes. It was like a spark from the future. I saw it, and that's when I believed her. I relented, and so I voted to let her in."

            Lifting the baby to where she could rub her cheek against the miniature forehead, she placed a kiss on the spot. "All this time, all these weeks she's been among us, she's prepared for this moment. All along, she knew she was destined to die for the life of our child." Looking to Seeker, she added, "I'm very, very sorry you found out the truth from her. But I'm also very, very glad you kept your silence and said nothing. If you had, Callie could have been lost to us."

            Stepping over, Star unexpectedly threw her free arm around Provoker's neck to hug him. Dropping a kiss to the surprised man's cheek, she gave him a grateful smile. "Thank you for what you did."

            Blushing, the Guardian tried to brush it off. "Hey, I couldn't let the little starlet get hurt, could I?"

            "Provoker?" Star lifted an eyebrow at him in mock reprimand.

            He sighed. "All right. You're welcome," he solemnly answered.

            Bruiser helped Seeker to her feet as Hunter slid an arm about his wife's waist. "I need to check the rest of this place, to see if there could be others here. Take Callie to the ship and wait for me there." Turning to the others, he asked, "Seeker, can you go with Star? Let Challenger know we'll be there as soon as we've cleared the place? Bruiser, come with me. I'll need your great strength to help clear away the debris."

            "I'll help you look," Provoker offered.