cats, and sooner or later one was bound to remind me of another. But all of them? It made me uneasy.
A swarthy thirty-something man in a short-sleeved Air Force uniform approached us. I saw gold oak leaves on his epaulets.
“Air support at last … fantastic.” He stuck his hand out to me as he looked Pal up and down. “I’m Major Woodrow Rodriguez, USAF, out of Fineman AFB, acting commander of military defense operations here. Got any more of these?”
He looked me square in the eye as I shook his hand, and in his gaze I saw a certain profound lack of interest in me as a woman. Guys usually either check you out a bit at first or dodge serious eye contact entirely to avoid seeming like they’re attracted to you. But as far as the major was concerned, I got the feeling I could have been a piece of talking furniture. When he saw the Warlock and my shirtless boyfriend get out of the van, though, there was a faint spark of interest in his face. Faint, but definitely there.
“More like Pal?” I replied. “No, sorry, he’s unique … but if you’re with the Air Force, why don’t you have planes and helicopters? And why is everybody here and not at the air base?”
I looked around at the whip-lean cadets and young militiamen standing guard and repairing weapons and attending to other duties in the courtyard, and I realized that if I were single, I’d be hard-pressed to find a date around here. Well, it made sense: I of all people knew the fierce tweak Miko could put on your hormones, and these boys had all survived at least a year of her tampering with their minds and bodies. Any gay kid growing up in a military-minded family in a small West Texas town would learn a monk’s restraint, or he’d probably end up broken, bloody, and crucified on a barbed wire fence before he turned twenty-one. Don’t ask, don’t tell, and most important, don’t die.
The major gave a harsh, barking laugh. “Fineman AFB is little more than a smoking crater now. Miko infiltrated the minds of some of our key personnel and brainwashed them into committing coordinated acts of domestic terrorism and treason against the base and their fellow airmen. Only a few dozen of us survived the assault on the base; we scavenged some small and medium arms, but most of the vehicles and all the aircraft were destroyed. Once Miko revealed herself and her intentions, we chose to activate the ROTC cadets here at CSU and reestablish our base of operations in these core campus buildings.”
Despite his scowling demeanor, the major had truckloads of square-jawed, take-charge charisma. A man’s man, through and through. My body was reacting to the smell of his testosterone-laden sweat; it didn’t care that he was gay. It didn’t care that I was in a committed relationship. It wanted what it wanted. And what it apparently wanted was to drive me to hang myself in frustration.
Oblivious to what was happening in my pants, the major gestured toward the high-rise dorms. “This isn’t your everyday college campus. In addition to generating its own power at the physical plant, it has its own sewage treatment and water reclamation facilities. Part of Miko’s attack on Fineman involved dumping psychoactive drugs in our water tower, so from the outset we knew we needed to keep tight security on our food and drink supplies. However, since her initial attack, she seems content to wage a war of attrition through demoralization.”
“So what did she say she wants?” I unbuckled the chin strap on my riding helmet and took the stifling headgear off.
The major gave me another coldly direct gaze. “She says she wants our souls. I was never religious before all this happened—and I certainly never believed in magic and flying spiders—but whatever she takes from a man, it’s the very essence of what makes him human. Nobody’s the same after she touches them. We’ve lost a lot of good men to her.”
“And women, too, I expect.”
The major looked away toward Cooper and the Warlock, who were unloading some boxes of ammunition from the back of the van into the waiting arms of the cadets. Gave a slight shrug. “Women, too. We did manage to evacuate as many mothers with children as possible before the city got locked down. It was only the right thing to do.”
Charlie came over to us, adjusting the cat’s sling nervously as