Chuck jerked her close.
Beth bunched her unbound knee tight against her chest then drove it into his crotch with everything she had.
She prayed to Principle it was enough.
Chuck fell, and Beth did too. It was the first break of the night—she landed on a big parka that had been discarded on the floor.
She lay on her face, the chair riding her back like a monkey, ass in the air and her face planted in soft down.
She was suffocating in a jacket, tied to the chair while a dangerous Three lay just paces away, grabbing at his nether regions.
With every ounce of her diminishing strength, Beth turned her head. Glorious oxygen filled her burning lungs.
She coughed, and Chuck's muddy eyes trained on her face.
The planned cruelty she saw in the stare turned her veins to ice.
When Chuck recovered from her opportunist attack, it would be she who would be defenseless.
Beth closed her eyes, thinking of her life and how much of it was yet unlived.
She thought of Jeb.
The effort to keep the crystalized tears of her despair from falling was ugly.
*
Jeb's head cocked to the side when he thought he heard a vague scream.
Ten precious minutes they'd been looking for Jasper.
It was sufficient time for one human to do the unspeakable to another.
The trail had ended at a car's treads.
The spun mud had been flung along the sides of tree trunks in a villainous spray of indifference.
Chuck had left in one Hades of a hurry.
Jacky had managed to gasp out that there was a caretaker's shed not too far away and that Chuck held a part-time maintenance position there.
Sure he does.
“Can we run it?”
Jacky shook his head.
“You can,” he said, out of breath.
“Where?” Jeb asked. A muffled clap arrested his body, and his ears pricked, listening for Jasper.
Her scent was on the wind, like wild roses and woman. He caught it.
“Half mile that way,” Jacky pointed vaguely north.
Jeb ran, his heels kicking his own ass, his arms cracking against his side like spinning saws.
Breath tore at his throat as his hair swept back.
Scraping, then a clatter.
He shot to the left.
A roof—he could just make out the outline of black against a midnight sky. A crumbled, out-of-use chimney jogged out of the top like a rotting tooth hanging on by a thread.
The door was painted red like old blood.
Jeb never slowed down, swinging his leg out in a kick that took the handle, flinging it away and throwing the door open ahead of his momentum.
His mind was a camera shutter.
The scene filled his vision.
Click.
Jasper covered in blood, her face so soaked with it that only her eyes gazed unblinking back at him like stranded black gems.
Click.
A bloodied Three, his lip a torn flap of meat. A limping stagger told Jeb Jasper had worked him.
Click.
Jeb plowed into Chuck, upending him neatly.
They sailed into the back wall and through it.
Chuck swiped the knife out, and Jeb plowed the hilt with his fist.
It flew away harmlessly, and Jeb sank his fist into Chuck's throat, ending whatever words he'd thought to utter.
A gurgle leaked out as Jeb straddled him.
Jeb jerked Chuck up with one hand and joined his other around the Three's neck. He placed his thumbs underneath the meaty jaw, and his eyes met Chuck’s.
Jeb smiled as he spun that neck in the wrong direction.
Bone squealed for a moment's protest as he ended Chuck.
Jeb dropped the body and stood.
He turned around, staring through the hole in the shed and saw Jasper through it.
He'd never seen her cry—not once.
Jeb's hands shook; the rage had nowhere else to go. Killing Chuck twice wouldn't have been enough.
Tears made clean tracks through the blood on Jasper’s face.
Jeb wondered when logic had left him and emotion taken its place.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Jeb had never felt empathy during a session of torture. It's not what Reflectives worried, or talked, about. They completed their mission.
Things occurred.
So why was he having so much trouble breathing as his ceramic switchblade cut through the obsolete binders that held Jasper's wrists?
Her hands fell, the brutal stripes against her flesh bleeding and raw.
He pulled her away from the chair, kicking it aside.
It rolled in a clatter, and Jeb sat on his ass, widening his legs.
He leaned forward, carefully sliding his powerful arms underneath Jasper's back.
She was so light as he pulled her onto his lap.
Her eyes were at half-mast. Consciousness was not full.
He extracted a clean towel from one of the utility pockets in his denims and wiped her face. It made a clean spot, but it wasn't sufficient. She needed a thorough cleansing.
“Hey,” he said when the velvet of her gaze swept past his own.
“Hey,” she whispered back.
Jeb meant to look away, he did. He found he could not. The dried blood, grime, and her wounded face needed attention.
He moved her head to the crook of his arm. The naked bulb swinging above them threw jagged shadows and light around the room and across her expression.
A fine bruise was beginning at the corner of Jasper's eye, and her opposite cheek was starting to swell from a hard slap to her ivory skin, marred with a hot-pink handprint.
“He's dead.”
She blinked slowly.
“Mission accomplished,” Jasper whispered as her head rolled more deeply inside his arm.
Jeb felt his heartbeat thump against her face.
The moment was a keen one—ready, alive.
Instinctual.
Beth felt it, too. She moved her face away from the hammering heartbeats against his ribs.
His eyes moved to her mouth, the only thing that was whole and perfect.
He licked his lips.
In that moment, Jeb was painfully aware of his long-term denial.
His hand moved to cradle her jaw, a thumb caressing the delicate bone. He took in the fluttering pulse at the base of her throat.
Beth swallowed, her wide eyes held on his.
Jeb's thumb touched the mouth he'd been looking at for months.
If he was honest with himself, it had been years.
Jeb brought Beth closer as he leaned down to meet her.
His lips touched hers, and his timepiece slipped away.
The speeding clock ground to a halt, and he took a breath of liberated air.
He no longer worked for The Cause but for his own happiness.
Jeb wound Beth's arm around his neck.
“No,” she whispered around his seeking lips.
But she didn't stop him when he pushed past the blood of another to the sweet center of her mouth.
Beth responded with an intensity that made him groan and convulsively tighten his hold.
“Oh, yes,” Jeb said, awoken as if from a dream.
He felt as though he had been given the perfect key to fit a lock for a room full of treasure.
And here she was. Here she had always been.
His soul mate had been under his nose for two decades, and he'd never known it. Jeb's mind and body had tried to tell him, but the timepiece ticked, keeping that realization at bay by the slimmest of margins.
Many things suddenly made greater sense.
He gently pulled Beth closer, holding her tight, his nose in her hair.
Jeb's body sheltered her from harm. He faced the door, his back to the wall.
****
Jeb noticed another presence in the building and stood with Beth in hi
s arms.
She groaned.
His eyes went to her mouth again, and he tried to shake off the thrall.
“God… get a room,” Jacky said.
Jeb couldn't help but smile.
“I'll explain later.”
Jacky held up a hand. “Do ya think I need a play-by-play? I saw all the tongue dance.” He gave a little shake of his head.
They stood in awkward silence. Jacky's parents had been murdered, and he was obviously deflecting his emotions about the event.
“Listen,” Jeb began.
Jacky held up his palm, not looking Jeb in the eye.
“I don't want to talk about it.”
Jeb saw the choked grief on the boy's face and sighed.
“Fine,” he answered.
“We need to get his body inside this shed and make our way back to your domicile. Then we can tend to Beth's wounds and figure out your situation.”
“What's to figure out? My fucking parents are dead.”
Beth opened her eyes, looking very small in his arms, shell shocked and beaten.
“Take me to the angel.”
Jeb's face must've shown his confusion.
“We've got enough moonlight.”
Realization dawned.
Jeb laid Beth on the floor, and that was when he saw the angry wound on her side.
She was bleeding quite badly.
Jeb smiled at her, and Jacky turned away from the tenderness he saw there.
“I can't keep you whole.” Sharp remorse cut the atmosphere of the room like a knife.
“You tried… Jeb,” she managed.
Their eyes met, and he walked through the hole in the wall before he picked her up again and kissed her while she bled to death.
*
Beth couldn't believe what had happened. She wasn't an idiot.
She'd witnessed the same besotted gaze from other males who'd found their soul mate.
She couldn't wrap her mind around the idea that she could be Jeb's.
Yet she couldn't deny the way he'd acted—and touched her.
Beth recognized delayed shock when she felt it. The wounds, the event… the revelation—they were all working at once.
Jeb moved Chuck's body inside the shed while Jacky stayed beside Beth. He didn't flinch when she walked her fingers over to his hand and took it.
Her unspoken condolence was enough.
Jeb scooped her off the floor effortlessly and took her to the angel who guarded the entrance of a mausoleum.
Faint stars flickered like imprisoned diamonds in the obsidian cloak of the night. Beth shivered with the cold, and Jeb covered her more securely with his body.
As he drew closer, Jeb grinned when the prize came into sight.
As though orchestrated, a single moonbeam hit the angel’s trumpet. Its solid antique brass was worn through in spots underneath the original chrome finish.
The brass was pockets of warm butter under the caress of the white-ish blue moonlight.
The chrome reflected.
Jeb saw Beth's face intensify as they drew closer. Hers were the eyes of a Reflective specially tuned to all surfaces that reflected.
“Jacky,” Jeb threw behind his shoulder, the word full of command.
A hand grabbed the back of his rough cotton shirt.
Jeb noticed Beth had on only one shoe, his eyes catching on one small swinging foot.
“Jeb,” Beth whispered. His name from her mouth was a tonic.
“Yes?” He hugged her to him.
“Hurry.”
Beth's torso was covered with blood, soaking his clothes.
It was a defensive wound.
Chuck had been aiming for something more vital, like the femoral artery.
Beth would not be in his arms if it weren't for her deflection.
Jeb could kill Chuck again. Once was simply not enough.
She was losing her battle with consciousness.
“There, look,” Jeb said, his jaw ticking in the direction of the trumpet.
It glowed, and she stared.
Jacky's hand slid down Jeb's shirt and his grip tightened on a belt loop.
Heat drove from the cold earth and overtook Jeb and Beth, licking out to encompass Jacky.
They stood in a raging inferno of heat and jumped. Beth was at the helm, Jeb guided, and Jacky held on for dear life.
Jeb kept the Jacky's domicile in the forefront of his mind.
He held Beth tightly as they traveled, his healing thrown out deep and hard like a perfectly pitched fast ball.
Jeb knew it might be everything she needed.
*
Beth awoke in stages.
She was floating—and warm. In fact, she was almost too hot.
Slowly her heavy eyelids opened, and Beth heard a heavy exhale to her left.
It sounded relieved.
Jeb stared down at her, taking her hand from the bathwater, and a blush rose to burn along her skin.
Beth gazed at her body.
A bra and panties remained. She let her head fall back against the rim of the tub—more relieved than she could stand. If she’d enough energy, she would have laughed at herself. She was more female than she knew.
She'd almost died, and she was worried about being nude in front of Merrick—Jeb.
Beth rolled her head toward him. The coolness of the porcelain cleansing rim felt divine.
Looking into his eyes, she realized that maybe her worry hadn't been for nothing. Heat and tenderness were in a gaze that had only regarded her with detached interest before.
A curtain had swung aside to reveal his true feelings.
Jeb's large hand stroked her small one, every bit of him engaged with every bit of her.
She heard the dry click of her throat.
“Where?” she croaked, and he brought a cup of water to her lips, lifting her neck so she could drink. He set it on a rim of a sink that sat atop a pedestal.
“Am I?” she finished after the drink of heavenly water. Contaminated or not, it was some of the best she'd ever had.
Jeb didn't look away. “We're at Jacky's domicile.”
“Oh,” was all that Beth could muster.
Jeb seemed to understand her extreme awkwardness and said, “You're not fully healed.”
His thumb stroked along the outside of her eye lightly. “But the worst of it is gone.”
Beth saw where Chuck had nicked her thigh, which had caused an inevitable bleed-out for sure, but only a vague reddish stripe remained. Healing from another Reflective left no scars.
This would be no exception.
Beth would not ignore the pink elephant in the room.
Half-naked, wounded, and healing in a strange domicile on Three, she would ask the tough questions that needed answers.
“What's happened?”
Jeb arched a dark-blond brow.
“Besides you almost dying a horrible death at the hands of an accomplished sadist? Well…”
“Just tell me.”
His pale eyes regarded her steadily.
“You are the One,” he said carefully.
Beth shook her head in denial.
“I can't be—I'm Reflective.”
Jeb scrubbed his head with his free hand. She took in their linked hands.
His was so big that she couldn't see her own.
“You are—you have blood from another sector, Beth. I have no explanation. It is what it is. I feel as I feel. I can't quantify it, discount and certainly can't ignore it.”
Beth blew damp hair out of her face and Jeb tucked a strand behind her ear.
This new Jeb was beyond strange.
“I'm not pretty, Jeb. You have been with every Reflective. They are all more beautiful than me.”
He moved her chin until their gazes locked.
“I never was one to follow the Papilio ideal as perfect. And I haven't been with every Reflective.”
“Most,” she accused, and he inclined his head, a faint smile etch
ed on his perfect lips.
“You understand what this means. That I know that you are my perfect counter, but you do not. That you, as the female, will know your perfect male.”
Beth nodded. It was the paradox of truths.
“And you must duel if I find that male.”
His eyes latched onto hers and wouldn't let go. She couldn’t look away.
“To the death.”
“Jeb—don't do this. Pretend your timepiece worked perfectly, and it was just because I happened to be there when it failed. Don't deal with the ridicule and strife from being with… someone like me.”
Mongrel, ugly, small… female.
Jeb rubbed her cooling arm that rested on the rim of the tub against his cheek. “That is one of the reasons I know you are she.”
“What? Why?” Beth could feel the incredulity on her face.
His gray eyes lit on her expression.
“Because I'm too selfish to be attracted to someone like myself. A soul mate must be the complement, the other half. It's well documented.”
Beth smiled. Then she laughed.
“Not going to deny it then?” Jeb asked, his eyes smiling along with his mouth.
“No,” she managed through her laughter. Her ribs ached while Jeb's face adored her.
Maybe she could get used to this new Jeb Merrick.
But what of their return to Papilio, when every Reflective would hate them? When they would seek her out for injury, thinking it had been her bid to win him?
What of the future male who waited for her when the timepiece she held degraded?
Not much scared Beth.
That epiphany terrified her.
Beth was brave, yet she couldn't fight everything.
*
Jacky's lip trembled until he captured it in his teeth. He slid the clothing through the cracked door.
Beth was submerged to the top of her chin in the tub.
“Here's some stuff that doesn't have blood and shit all over it.”
He closed the door, and Beth stood, rivulets of water trailing down her body. She stepped out of the tub and locked the door.
It was more a mental security.
If Jeb wanted to get to her, he could instantly. However, Beth liked the illusion of modesty the locked door afforded.
She stripped the panties and bra off and tossed them in the trash.
Beth moved to the tub, where she popped the drain and jerked the faucet to the hottest setting.
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