Jeb let out the pent-up frustration in an explosive breath.
“Yes.”
“Well, as I see it, if that assjack, Ryan?” Jeb nodded, and he continued, “If Ryan was telling the truth, then anything could be happening there.”
“I will find Kennet and Calvin, and they can help me retrieve Beth.”
“If ya can.”
Jeb's fists clenched.
“Listen—Merrick, you're a bad-ass Reflective and all, but Ryan handed you your ass with that gun…”
“Stabilizer.”
His eyes sailed upward in a hard roll. “Whatever. And your girlfriend isn't without skills. Just in case you hadn't noticed.”
Jeb scrubbed his face. “I don't have time to defend the indefensible. Ryan took me by surprise. I've never had a fellow Reflective turn.” Jeb scowled.
“Beth is not my girlfriend.”
“She's something.”
“She is my soul mate.”
“How does that work?” Jacky asked.
“I don't have the time…”
“I can't help unless I know the why.”
Merrick caught a disbelieving bark as it escaped him, and it sounded as if he were choking. “You're not going to help. I will sequester you from harm in Papilio, collect reinforcements, and rescue Beth.”
Jacky folded his arms. “You think you got it all figured out, but I know ya don't.”
Jeb clenched his jaw.
“Let's go.”
“No. Piss off.”
Jeb moved toward him.
“I'd rather take my chances on Earth, than deal with all your stupid shit.”
Jeb's mind worked. He was honor bound to take the boy, who had been orphaned in part because of their interference.
He felt a stab of shame.
It didn't stop him from doing what he must.
“What of Madeline?”
The Three teen, who had just seen the death of his parents and brother within a year of one another, lost the bravado that had been the glue keeping his emotions together.
“No,” Jacky said, his face crumpling.
“She might not be safe in Papilio,” Jeb pressed.
Jacky's hate-filled eyes latched onto Jeb.
“You bastard.”
Jeb couldn't deny the truth. “Yes.”
He stared at Jeb a moment more.
“Fine. Let's go.”
They walked to the bathroom, where the mirror captured their faces: Jeb's set in stone, the boy's resolved.
Jeb let the mirror, the purest conduit of transfer, guide them. A locator wasn't necessary.
They would be home to Papilio shortly.
Or whatever was left of it.
*
Jumping to Jeb's home world was usually akin to slipping on a comfortable pair of shoes.
Not this time.
He landed in the wood that bordered the vineyards and the greater quadrant of Barringer.
He and Jacky lay on the mossy floor of the wood, catching their breath. Jeb's eyes adjusted to the gloom, his heart hammering against Jacky's back.
“Let go of me.”
Jeb released him, and Jacky turned and stood.
Jeb's breath caught in his throat as he also stood and got a hard look at Jacky.
It was true then—all of it.
“What the hell is your problem?” Jacky asked.
“It has been five years.”
“Yeah? That's what numb nuts said.”
Jacky threw up his arms into the air and laughed. “Like his traitorous ass can be trusted.”
His eyes narrowed at Jeb's silence.
“Why are you lookinʼ at me like that?”
“You'll see when we get to my place.”
Jacky's eyes narrowed. “I don't like secrets, Merrick.”
Jeb turned. “Let's just see if my domicile is secure, and we can go over our… options from there.”
Jacky stewed. He seemed to come to terms with how limited his options were. He basically had none. “Eff—fine.”
They began walking toward town. Jeb stuck to the shadows, and Jacky followed him closely.
Twice, he fell down and swore. “I'm graceless! What the hell…?”
“Quiet.”
Another curse, then trampling after Jeb again.
When Jeb was finally within sight of his dwelling his stomach dropped.
Every window bore automatic bars, the main entrance had a steel-reinforced secondary door, and the roof had sprouted spikes through the thatching.
Jacky's mouth was agape. “What is this? Armageddon?”
“An apt analogy,” Jeb replied dryly.
“How do we get in? It's a damn fortress!”
Jeb lifted his thumb.
“Ah, yeah, that's right—you guys have pulse tech like us.”
Not exactly like.
Jeb was cautious, creeping along the building's shadows, not liking the absolute silence.
“This is creepy.”
Jeb agreed.
Finally, he came to the back entrance and slid his thumb into the pocket that housed the thumbprint-reader pad.
The door whispered open, and they slipped inside. When it closed behind him, Jeb skirted the elevator, taking the stairwell like a man being chased by the devil himself.
He heard Jacky follow him, not as smoothly as before, but that was to be expected.
After he’d placed his thumbprint to another pulse reader, his dwelling door opened.
Five cycles of dust greeted Jeb. The staleness of an uninhabited dwelling that was empty of life surrounded him like a decomposing cocoon as Jacky entered at his heels.
“Go to the cleansing room and look in the mirror. Not the short one above the sink, but the full-length one that hangs behind the door.”
“What? Why?” Jacky asked, slightly out of breath.
“It's easier.”
“You are so screwed up.” He stomped off.
But Jeb's mind was on Beth.
He barely heard the hoarse, surprised shout from the cleansing room.
Jacky was just suddenly there.
“Explain this,” Jacky said, running a palm over the surface of his body.
“It's been five years,” Jeb repeated, already walking to his bed to cram gear into his pack. He needed to find Calvin and Kennet—like yesterday.
“Merrick.”
Jeb turned.
“Tell me why I look like a guy now.”
Jeb's eyebrows jumped. “You need me to tell you that you're clearly male?”
Jacky sighed. “You're humor sucks donkey dick. Tell me why I was almost thirteen thirty minutes ago, and now I'm…”
“Nearly eighteen.”
Jacky threw up his hand in perceived relief that Jeb understood the crux of it. “Looks like it.”
Jacky was on the verge of manhood, over six feet, chestnut hair deepened to dark brown, his eyes the same jewel-like green they'd been since that first ill-fated jump to Three.
He'd skipped right over all his awkward adolescence and landed on the good side, gaining the muscles and height without the acne.
The arrogant edge that came with young-male territory remained firmly in place, Jeb noted.
“Time moved on here. You simply can't stay the age you were on Three when five years have passed on Papilio.”
“I'm not complaining. I look kick ass!” He flexed his muscles for emphasis.
Jeb did a slow perusal. He looked as he should.
Jacky noted, “You don't look any different.”
“I am Reflective.”
Jacky made a sound in the back of his throat. “Yeah, and that makes all the difference?”
“Yes.”
They stared at each other.
“What about Maddie? I thought you said she'd be safe.”
Jeb hung his head.
The females.
When his head rose, he clashed with eyes that held an artificially gained maturity they should not have had.
/> “Ya don't know, do you?”
Jeb shook his head. “We will ascertain much by just finding my comrades.”
“Are these backstabbers like Ryan…?”
“No, these are real Reflectives, not”—Jeb spoke to the floor—“not the Reflective Ryan has become.”
Jeb dare not let himself speculate about the ousted Rachett.
Jeb straightened, taking a look around his dwelling. He clapped Jacky on the back. “Grab some nourishment, I don't know when our next meal will come.”
“No offense, Merrick, but after five years—you don't have anything worth foraging for.”
Jeb clenched his teeth.
Beth.
“Let's go.”
“We're finding Madeline, right?”
Eventually.
“Yes.”
“Okay, let's blow this Popsicle stand.”
Jeb stood for a moment, translating the slang.
He nodded. “Let's.”
They left the way they'd come—in stealth.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Beth held the flinch inside as Ryan fought off four bloodlings before the fifth and sixth joined in, bringing the Reflective to his knees.
Blood fell in a constant stream from his mouth.
His gaze locked on Beth.
“Don't look at her, hopper,” said a young bloodling, perhaps eighteen cycles.
“You shall not look upon our females.”
Beth did tense then. They were staking species claim on her.
Ryan wasn't finished, though. He caught the arrogant bloodling’s muscular leg mid-swing. He twisted the ankle, and the bloodling screamed in agony as Ryan broke it and surged forward.
Stopping a Reflective was nearly impossible. They had brought him down but not arrested his momentum.
He would get his hands on her.
They need more males.
Beth tore away from the male who held her.
She had thought seven against one was good odds, but Ryan was a vicious fighter. He'd been the best in hand-to-hand combat in their class of twenty-odd recruits.
She bounded over the top of the sand dune, with Ryan in hot pursuit.
Beth was simply outclassed. If she were Ryan's size, she would have a chance, but pound for pound, inch for inch—it was too much disparity.
A strong hand clamped down on her shoulder and spun her around. Ryan's face was a pulverized mask of blood. Beth didn't hesitate, jabbing him in the throat with everything she had. She closed her eyes against the blood spray as he wrapped her lower body with his arms and slammed her onto the sand.
A hard surface would have broken her back. As it was, her teeth snapped together, but she found she still had breath in her lungs to scream.
She shrieked in Ryan's face, full bodied, releasing every bit of loathing, rage, and accumulated injustices in the long agonized wail.
He hesitated in surprise, and she bit the hand he’d clamped over her mouth, bringing her knee up as she did. Ryan deflected it with his own leg and spread her legs with his knees as she lay beneath him. He pinned her arms above her head with one powerful hand.
Her panic flared.
He's too big!
Beth fought in earnest.
Ryan flipped his bleeding hand off her mouth, and she bellowed into his face. He grunted as a foot landed on his rib cage like an interfering insect sting.
He wound his hands around Beth's throat, ignoring everything but ending her life.
She bucked her hips, but his knee kept her legs wide, splayed like a bug on a scientist's board, pinned and helpless.
Beth would have given anything for a reflection. Her eyes scanned the midnight blanket behind the pale moon and faded stars, her hands locked tight against his straining arms, pushing him off as he dug against her deeper.
Fight!
Beth's eyes began to get heavy on the forever twilight of the sky. Her hands fell away, plopping to the sand.
Her vision dimmed.
Through the slits of her fading eyesight, two hands clamped down on Ryan's neck.
Breathe, Beth commanded dimly.
The hands pulled Ryan off her, and eyes like the deepest part of night peered into her face, but she was too oxygen deprived to fight back.
Beth fought to hold on to her slipping consciousness, trying to swim against the tide of her abused esophagus toward healing oxygen.
She lost.
*
Beth was floating.
Again.
She didn't know where she was. Her eyes fluttered open and latched onto a wooden box of a room. It was dark, but she could make out the shape of each tongue-in-groove board of the wood. A window without glass framed a view of a dense tree canopy.
Beth sat up, and her clothes began to steam. She lifted her hands and could make out the pruning of her palms and fingertips.
She was in a huge tub of black liquid. She wrinkled her nose in distaste.
She struggle to get out of the tub, then a voice from the shadowed darkness of the room said, “Stop. I will help you.”
Beth almost fell, but she gripped the edge.
“Who—” Her voice cracked, and she tried again, “Who are you?”
Fuck this. “Where is Ryan?”
Beth hated the fear that stretched her voice into a thin breathy whisper.
“We left him for the nightlopers.”
Beth shuddered. Even a Reflective would be hard pressed to escape that species.
Barely humanoid, they had evolved specifically to hunt—to kill. Another evolved Sector Seven mess.
“They'll kill him,” Beth said in a flat voice.
The bloodling who had saved her moved into the vague moonlight, which was brighter now that true night had fallen.
A fierce shriek sounded and Beth flinched.
There they are. The mournful howls of the nightlopers filling the night.
“Where are we?”
Her eyes found his in the darkness. Like black coins in the pearl-gray flesh of his face, they were silver in the moonlight.
“We are safe from those below.”
Chatty male.
Beth swung wet hair out of her face and noticed that her throat felt better than it should. She rotated it again.
Near perfect, tender, but workable.
She peered down at the water swirling around her legs.
Not water—blood.
Beth scrambled out of the tub, and the bloodling laughed from his belly.
He reached out and clamped onto her arms, steadying her.
Attempting to escape would have been useless. They were in a fort in the trees, with nightlopers beneath them, Ryan wasn’t certainly dead, and she was in dire need of sustenance. Beth hung her head.
Despair choked her.
She longed for Jeb, for Papilio.
“I am Slade.”
Beth's head jerked up. “Who? The Slade?”
“There isn't another one.”
Bloodlings went by only one name; no two were alike. In the lore, bloodlings’ history spoke of vampire jumpers from Sector Seven who had landed on One, never to return. Those jumpers had evolved into the bloodlings.
She studied him by the light of the moon. His body was like a Reflective's; he had long, muscular legs made for jumping and wide-set eyes with unusually large irises, perfect for night and peripheral vision.
Beth remembered that she possessed the most acute night vision of any Reflective.
“Does my reputation precede me?”
His amusement at the mess she was obviously in pissed Beth off.
She folded her arms across her soaking chest. “I've never jumped to One.”
Slade released her arms, and she rubbed where his hands had been, hating the way they'd felt on her.
Right.
“Then why do you know of me?”
“Because you're in the lore.”
“Ah,” his palm held his chin. Slade's lips mocked her with a ghost of a smile. “So yo
u are a fresh Reflective.” It wasn't a question.
Be polite. He rescued me from Ryan.
“Yes,” she all but hissed.
He smiled, no fangs present.
More howling and snarls presented beneath them and Beth moved to the window that was at her waist.
She gazed many meters below just as a nightloper caught sight of her form in the window.
Beth didn't move away. Let it see what she was and feel fear.
Reflectives were renowned for claiming victory despite being severely outnumbered.
“Step away,” Slade said.
Beth ignored him.
He jerked her back, and she wrestled in his grip. “Do you think you can get away, tiny one?”
“If I was willing to hurt you—yes.”
Slade released her immediately, and she whirled to face him, her hands in loose combative posture, her knees slightly bent—her stomach digesting her spine.
Her empty belly growled, and the noise filled the room.
It took all the threat out of the moment, and Beth gritted her teeth.
Slade chuckled then laughed—then he roared.
“Yeah, laugh it up.”
He put a fist over his mouth.
“Let us establish who's in charge here,” Slade began.
Beth put a thumb to her chest. “I'm in charge of me.”
Slade's dark eyes lit on her then he was suddenly in front of her, using a blurring tactic of speed that was a holdover of his vamp lineage.
His hand cupped the back of her neck, strong fingers tightening to her uppermost threshold of pain.
“Reflective,” he whispered, his hot breath licking along her temple, his fingers dizzyingly hard against her spine.
“I could have killed you thirty times before now. I have no desire to do so. Do not make me commit violence against a female of our species for stubborn pride.”
Beth wanted to tap out, as she'd seen the cage fighters of Three do when they could not escape a classic break of a limb, a loss of consciousness, or imminent death.
Reflectives did not tap out.
The pressure around her neck increased at the same time cool lips trailed from her temple to her cheekbone.
The sensation rocked back and forth, back and forth, from pain to pleasure.
“No,” Beth moaned in a low, pain-choked voice.
His sudden release of pressure made Beth fall forward as his mouth covered hers in an erotic surprise of heat and skin.
Slade groaned as he bent her body back, arcing her torso deeper into his.
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