Rising

  ***

  Xanthus slung his backpack over his shoulders, climbed on his motorcycle, and started his drive out to the warehouse dock. He raised his face into the light rainfall and breathed in a lungful of clean air.

  What had he been thinking? His plan had never included kissing her. His control was already in threads. If he wasn’t careful, he’d be the one hunted down. As it stood now, if he were caught, he was already looking at ten years hard labor. He should walk away—pretend he’d never met Sara.

  He just couldn’t do it. Not only was she a risk of exposure for Dagonians that he could not leave unguarded, but she was also an innocent, a helpless female who was completely unaware of the axe hanging over her head. Xanthus had always prided himself on his abilities as a warrior. But even he didn’t know if he could protect Sara from that axe dropping. He was sickened when he thought of what fate awaited her if she were ever discovered.

  It was her eyes. They were the dead giveaway to what she was. Those eyes. He shuddered thinking of them. They were beautiful, bewitching—like a sea goddess. But hers weren’t the eyes of a goddess, but those of a half-human, half-Dagonian girl.

  Xanthus shook himself. Now was not the time to think of beautiful females. He needed to get his mind on tonight’s job. Lives depended on the success of tonight’s mission.

  He pulled up a private road and turned off into an almost indiscernible path through the foliage. He drove his bike in as far as he could, turned off the engine, and hiked into the trees. Being a moonless night, it was black as pitch for a human, but Xanthus saw as well in the darkest of nights as during the daylight. The shoreline came into view as he passed through the palm trees. At the water’s edge, he dropped his pack in the sand and stripped out of his clothing. Grabbing his pack, he entered the water and submerged.

  He surfaced under the dock and listened for footfalls above. He heard nothing but the chirping of several birds. He took hold of the wooden dock and pulled himself up to peer above. No one was about. He hefted his body out of the warm water into the cool night air. It breezed over him as he lay on the hard, wooden dock.

  Several minutes later, his cloaked figure moved on. Light poles above forced him into the shadows. He made his way between several brick buildings to a large warehouse backed up against the shore. He knew that a ship was at the dock, waiting to be loaded before it disembarked. He also knew there were four security guards, armed only with clubs.

  With his back against the cement foundation of the large, metal warehouse, Xanthus pulled his pack off his back and removed a small, black disk the size of his palm. He pressed it against the side of the building and pushed a small, red button to activate it.

  Xanthus repeated the process on each of the four outside walls of the building. Then he crept across the gangplank and attached another disk against the side of the ship. With the devices in place, it was time to locate the guards.