Her mouth opened slightly to allow her labored breathing; a shiny layer of sweat became visible above her upper lip and brow. She found that the rough ground against her cheek was suddenly comforting and soft. Her head swam with impact and disease—she felt lightheaded and far away from her body. Pax was fairly certain that she was about to die. People had died in the vector zone before—Vincent had assured her non-too-gently that it had been a rather common occurrence. Pax tried to anchor herself to her afflicted body as her mind begged for permission to blissfully float away.
“Thorn,” she whispered. Her right thumb and index finger moved to rub the ring which was peeking out from the damaged glove on her left hand. Yes. She brought the hand close to her chest, hugging the ring frantically. If I live, then yes. Her torso was seized by a violent coughing fit before she lost consciousness again. A trickle of blood dribbled out of the side of her open mouth, pooling beneath her chin.
* * *
Paxie? Did you find the medicine?
Amara’s faint telepathic voice flooded Pax’s awareness—she could hear her friend’s weakness in the wisplike weight of the thought. Pax herself could not bring herself to open her eyelids or respond. She continued to lie on the ground, plagued and loitering somewhere between unconsciousness and a coma.
I… I think I’m bleeding, Paxie. I can’t see. I’ve lost my vision, but I can feel a warm, sticky wetness.
Pax saw pictures dancing behind her closed eyes. She saw her old colleague, Dr. Winters, tossing her a plastic bag filled with dark red blood cells. You need O neg, right babes? She remembered—or perhaps she imagined—catching the bag and glaring at him. More plasma too, you moron! Stop calling me ridiculous names. It’s Dr. Burnson, okay? A few yellowish bags of fresh, frozen plasma came flying her way. Whatever you want, dahlin’. Pax’s eyelids lifted open slowly, as though there were gallons of sandbags resting on them. She shifted her face, and raised a hand to wipe the drool from her lips. She squinted and blinked when she saw that it was not drool, but red liquid pooling under her chin. She was not dead yet, but she would be soon. Very soon, by her estimation. She knew what she needed to do.
I got your medicine, Mara, she responded mentally. Pax struggled to roll onto her back. Ignoring her spinning head, she placed both of her hands on her lower abdomen. She carefully positioned and joined her thumbs and forefingers in the shape of a heart over her solar plexus. Concentrating on Amara’s life force, she initiated her special technique: teleportation. Pax was the only living deva who could perform such a feat, but it was usually too inaccurate and draining to be of much practical use. Her grandfather had taught her decades ago, in her youth, but he had been killed before she had been able to perfect the skill under his guidance. Luckily, in desperate times, her body seemed to cooperate. She found herself dematerializing and rematerializing precisely on the ground beside her friend. Yes! Thank Sakra. I might be getting better at that, but it doesn’t matter anymore.
Amara reached out and touched Pax’s arm, sensing her nearness. Oh, Paxie… Although her friend was close enough for voice to be effective, it was still more energy efficient to speak with her mind. You’re burning up and your skin is clammy. You’re worse off than me!
It’s dengue fever, probably. But I know how to fix it. Pax struggled to pull herself off the ground and failed miserably. She growled, rolling onto her side and deciding that she could perform a miracle from a horizontal position. There would be no point to being a demigoddess if she could not. Here, give me your hand. I am going to give you the medicine through your wrist.
Amara winced when she felt a sharp pain in her arm. What are you doing?
Listen, Mara. Your dad said a few things to me before we entered this place. He told me that no woman has ever survived the vector zone.
What? Amara was staring blankly at her friend through sightless eyes. Pax! How could you…
The dark-haired woman sighed as she put her own wrist near to her friend’s. That’s why I didn’t tell you. I didn’t want to scare you.
Amara shook her head, a motion which caused intense pain to flood her brain. So why are you telling me now that I am blind, diseased, my skin is permanently ruined with some tropical rash…
Because I can save you, Mara. You’re going to be the first woman to survive the Pseudosphere.
You’ve been sitting on a cure this whole time and… me? Why didn’t you say ‘we?’ Pax!
You are experiencing severe hemorrhaging. I am going to use my last bit of power to assume Ruby Form, and I’m going to give you a blood transfusion. The prana in my blood will heal you.
How much blood?
All of it.
Pax!
I’m dying too. At least this way, one of us will stand a chance. You should emerge from this twice as powerful as before, because you will have all of my strength.
Dear Sakra, Paxie—don’t do this. Here, just hold my hand. We can die together. I don’t mind dying as long as my best friend is with me.
Pax smiled. Tell your brother I love him—I don’t forgive him, but I do love him. Let’s do this shit!
Wait, Pax…
Pax searched the very essence of her personal life force for drops of remaining power. She breathed deeply of the deceptively sweet jungle air. She knew that she would only be able to sustain the energy enhancement for a few seconds—but it was all she would need. Releasing her breath in a gush, Pax allowed the familiar power to flood her body, creating a red glow around her skin. She scraped her wrist clean, and concentrated on the small area just underneath her tattered leather glove. Positioning her arm near to Amara’s, she used her mind to force her blood out of her body. Manipulating the flow into a small stream with her telekinesis, she floated the blood directly from her vein and into Amara’s body.
Paxie, please don’t. I’m not worth this. Amara tried to pull her wrist away, but Pax was so focused that the jet followed her movements mechanically. Gosh, that tickles—oh! My vision is returning. Hey, I think your technique is working! Amara sat up abruptly, looking down in wonder at the liquid live wire which joined their wrists like USB cables transferring information. “Pax, that should be enough,” Amara, said. It was the first time she had been able to use her voice in days. “I feel better—stop bleeding yourself into me.”
Pax knew that if she stopped, the healing effect would be only temporary. The dark red fountain that she was willing to leave her body blurred in her vision until it turned amethyst. Ignoring her mind’s tricks, she maintained her concentration to direct the flow of life-liquid into her friend’s bloodstream. Her gloved hand began to twitch as the super-powered energy was drained from her wrist; she felt her lover’s ring tingling around her finger as though it were made from barbed wire. Thorn, she thought again, for strength. I’m sending your little sis home to you if it’s the last thing I do. The vibrant red glow of energy around her body began to flicker, and she bit down into her lip in an effort to maintain the transformation. Drops of blood appeared on her lip, but they were paltry in comparison to the volume that was being pumped away into Amara’s body.
Amara finally clamped her hand around Pax’s wrist. “Stop!” she shouted. “Stop!” Her voice echoed through the jungle, followed by a deathly silence. Amara knew that she did not need to check her friend’s pulse. There was nothing left to be pulsed through her body. “What the fuck did you do that for, Pax Burnson!” Amara screamed. She reached out and hugged her friend’s cold, limp body against her, unable to comprehend what had just happened.
“This isn’t real,” Amara told herself, shutting her eyelids tightly as she rocked back and forth with Pax’s body in her arms. “This isn’t real. It’s all some crazy nightmare. I want to wake up now. Daddy, I want to wake up now. Take me home, please, take me home. Pax is fine. Pax is fine. She’s right here, and she’s a goddess. Of course she’s fine.”
After a few minutes, Amara’s denial turned to anger. She slapped the tears away from her eyelashes. “Take it back!”
she told Pax. She held out her wrist and shook it, trying to create the same controlled stream of blood flow. “Take your filthy blood back! I don’t want it!” While she was trying to do this, she suddenly noticed that a yellow door had appeared a few feet away. She stared at the door in shock for several minutes. “Now we win?” she asked in a whisper. “This is how we beat Room Three?”
She rebelliously ignored the door for several minutes, cradling Pax’s head against her protectively. But then she realized that she could grow sick again quite easily in the hideous jungle. Pax’s sacrifice would have been for nothing. With a sniffle, Amara rose to her feet, struggling to lift her friend’s body. She carried Pax to the yellow door, and kicked it open angrily. She stepped through to the little purple safe-room, and hastily deposited Pax on the bed. When the door disappeared behind her, there was a new plaque in its place, but she did not have the heart to read it as she wiped the tears from her face.
Amara sat beside Pax on the bed, staring forward blankly at the purple walls. What am I going to tell Raymond? Her dad is going to murder me. He was never the same after he lost Bridget, and losing Pax… it will just kill the poor man. These thoughts caused more tears to fall down her cheeks, but they quickly dissolved in the new red heat that was surrounding her body. Thorn will never speak to me again. I killed my brother’s fiancé. Oh, Sakra—there’s no point of me going back to Earth without her. Why did she do this? Finally, Amara collapsed on the bed beside her friend’s corpse, hugging her around the waist fiercely. Come back, Paxie. Please come back. There’s no point to anything without you. You’re my best friend. You’re my strength. You’re everyone’s strength.
With her eyes shut tightly as she wept, Amara did not notice that the red energy enveloping her body was touching Pax’s skin and hair, causing the mud coating her friend to sizzle and burn. Ash was right about everything, Amara thought to herself. He knew exactly how weak I was, and that is why he left me. What will he think of me? Oh, Ash will hate me forever. He already despises me, but this…
“Cheater,” Pax mumbled.
“What?” Amara gasped.
“You achieved Ruby Form from stealing my power,” Pax accused faintly. “I had to actually work to learn how to do that. It took me eighteen years of practicing and you just piggybacked on my power.”
“You’re alive!” Amara shrieked.
“I guess so,” Pax said, with a groan. “Kind of weak and dizzy, but pretty good.”
“Don’t you ever freak me out like that again!” Amara screamed, hitting Pax violently across the face.
“Nice,” Pax said, rubbing her jaw. “First time you ever managed to hurt me.”
“I thought you were dead,” Amara sobbed.
“Maybe I was,” Pax said, stretching her arms out. “I guess it must be a deva ability to replenish our blood supply pretty quickly. Who knew? Figures though. Being a goddess has got to be good for something.”
“Wait… did you say I’m in Ruby Form?” Amara asked. She bolted up from the bed and ran to her luggage, searching for a mirror. She held it up and looked into it with an excited squeal. “Paxie! My eyes are red! I’m in Ruby Form!”
“Congratulations,” Pax said with a halfhearted smile. “We’ll have a story for the families. ‘The first time Amara achieved Ruby Form, she was butt-naked and covered in mud.’”
“Well, let’s not tell them that part. This is exciting!” Amara had been too thrilled with the transformation to even notice that she and Pax were not wearing any clothing. In addition to the physical changes, she had evidently begun to outgrow her lifelong obsession with fashion. As the girls had gotten used to training together in the intense temperature fluctuations and strange conditions of the vector zone, they had basically begun to treat the whole place as their own private locker room. There were no strangers or men in the dimension, and no real reason for modesty. The red energy suddenly fizzled out while Amara was checking herself out in the mirror. “Oh, no! It’s gone.”
“Yeah, it’s tough to maintain. We both need to try to remain in Ruby Form for as long as possible. As you know, I can hold it for about twenty minutes on my own, and Para can hold it for thirty. I imagine that if we could stay joined as Para longer, she might be able to stay at that level for two hours.”
“Wow. I barely did two minutes or so.”
“You’ll learn. Now that you’ve achieved Ruby Form, we can really begin to push ourselves to get stronger!” Pax said optimistically.
Amara’s face fell. “Wait a second—what? There’s more?”
“Of course. We have three more rooms! We only just hit the halfway point.” Pax snuggled down in bed with a rapturous sigh. “I just need a little nap, and when I wake up we can enter Room Four.”
“No way in hell!” Amara shouted.
“What?” Pax asked, knitting her brow together.
“What is wrong with you, Pax! We’ve been training as hard as we can, practicing our powers for 1.5 years. Are you trying to kill me?”
“We just learned that death isn’t such a huge inconvenience.”
“Dammit, Burnson. We need to rest!” There was a new tone of ferocity in the blonde woman’s voice as she moved her hands to her hips in an angry, adamant pose. “I have been fried by lightning bolts. I have been digested by a dragon. I’ve had evil, evil jungle bugs infect me with deadly tropical diseases. I deserve a break.”
“Okay,” Pax said softly. “One week.”
“Only one week?” Amara said in dismay. “Why the hell are you driving us so hard?”
“Parabellum,” Pax answered sleepily.
“I’m sorry?” Amara asked.
“It’s what your dad told me,” Pax answered, already half asleep. “Parabellum: prepare for war.”
Chapter 7: Demigod or Businesswoman
When the door to Thornton’s office slammed loudly, the blonde businessman looked up from his desk in alarm. This was his sanctuary—no one ever entered without first being announced by Nina. No one, that is, except the woman who was now briskly striding across the floor, with a rolled up newspaper under her arm, and stainless steel flask of the strongest fair-trade coffee in her hand.
Thornton adjusted his glasses and sighed. “Mom, I’m in the middle of…”
Rose Kalgren viciously slammed the newspaper down on Thornton’s desk, causing his printed spreadsheets to float away in fear. “Who is she?”
With a glance at the photograph on the front page, Thornton ripped his glasses from his face and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Mom, it’s not what it looks li…”
“Her name, Thorn. What is this woman’s name?” Rose demanded. The older woman was dressed in full battle attire. Although she was well into her sixties, Rose looked terrifying in her stylish tweed business suit, expensive watch and pearl jewelry, and her hair gathered in the perfect French twist she had worn for decades when she had been the at the head of K.T. Enterprises.
“Medea,” Thornton answered, knowing that he had no choice.
“Give me her full name, please, along with any other information you have. I’m going to run a full background check to make sure that you’re safe.”
“Mom, look—there’s no need to investigate her. She’s not a spy from another company or anything like that. Ash and I met her in a club and we had a few drinks with her, that’s all.” He studied the beautiful woman depicted beside him on the front page of the newspaper. She had deep indigo hair which fell down her back in soft, feminine waves.
“How could you do this, Thorn? How could you be so dumb and allow yourself to get photographed with this woman in such an intimate way just a few days before you proposed to Pax?” Rose was wearing her war-face; this meant zero chance of escape.
“It’s not how I planned it,” he answered awkwardly. “Actually, I’m pretty sure that girl likes Ash better than me anyway.”
“Ash?” Rose screeched. She grew doubly upset, thinking of the man who had cast her daughter aside. Quickly gathering her compo
sure, she dug her fingernail into the photograph on the newspaper. “Is this a new thing you boys do? Share your girlfriends? Because it looks to me like you have your hands all over this woman in a very romantic way. How does Ash feel about that? Does he know you took her lingerie shopping in a public place?”
Thornton felt a blush coloring his cheeks at the uncomfortable subject matter. “Mom, please! Look, I can explain…”
“No, you look! Give me the girl’s last name.”
Thornton opened his mouth to respond, but found himself staring ahead blankly. “I… don’t know it.”
Rose threw her hands up into the air. “Oh my god! Wonderful. This is wonderful. What is she, an escort? A prostitute? How much did you pay her…”
“Mom!” Thornton shouted, horrified at the thought. “Stop it, seriously! She’s a really nice girl.”
“Poor Paxie. No wonder the girl went berserk.” Rose dragged the back of her hand across her forehead in frustration. “Okay, Thorn. Enough about the women. I’d like to inform you of some important changes which will be implemented to the company administration.”
Thornton nodded, glad for the focus of the conversation to be away from his personal life.
Rose smiled and sat down on the side of her son’s desk casually. “You’re taking a sabbatical.”
“I am?” Thornton immediately swiveled his chair to look at his computer, and began scanning his calendar. “That’s impossible. I don’t remember deciding…”
“I decided.”
The blonde man swallowed. He lifted a hand to brush his hair nervously. “Uh, Mom… what are you saying exactly?”
Thirty Minutes to Heartbreak Box Set (Books 1-3) Page 35