by Aaron Crash
Elle ran down the hallway from the bridge toward them. She had the last of Granny’s ancient stainless-steel syringes in her hand.
“No, Elle,” Blaze said.
But she was already injecting herself as she hurried toward them clustered together in the hallway.
Her eyes flashed scarlet.
And just like that, his sister had relapsed on Onyx energy.
NINE_
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The starship rocked gently from side to side as it roared across the galaxy, surfing down the spacetime wave, pushed and pulled by astral physics.
Elle sped up to them, all sitting or lying on the floor in front of the cargo bay door.
The Onyx witch turned addict threw out a hunk of honeycomb and thundered Onyx speak. It was a healing spell, and not just a little one. She was pouring all of the Onyx in her cells into the spell to fix him up.
Her mojo levels went from ninety-nine percent to fifty percent. Blaze disengaged his nanotech armor. The microscopic robots swirled around him and retreated into the gauntlet on his right hand. He watched as Elle’s healing spell forced the hooks out of his skin. They dropped and plinked on the floor. It should’ve hurt, but his cells were mending the damaged skin so fast it went from hurting to itching in nanoseconds.
He actually felt his shoulder joints grow back and snap into place. It was like someone was playing with Lego bricks in his body and snapping them together under his skin and muscle. Elle still screamed Onyx speak, her mouth open and working, her face twisted.
More energy filled him, and when his shoulder was healed, every bit of skin repaired, he felt his muscles growing. His shirt and pants split open and he shredded them. He grew an inch, and his head whirled. His scars disappeared, followed by his tattoos.
“Elle, stop!” he roared. “Stop!” He remembered how Elle had dosed Trina with Onyx energy in the dragon battle above Hutchinson Prime when they’d face the Gorebacks. His sister had turned Trina into an unstoppable battle vampire.
“Have to get it out of me!” Elle shrieked. “I have to get it all out of me, or I’ll kill you, kill you all!” Her eyes were lost in the red fire pouring out of them.
She switched to Fernando, healed him in seconds, and then switched that power back to Blaze until he’d grown thick with muscles and his hair grew into his eyes and his beard fell to his chest.
Then Elle slumped to the ground, on all fours, crying. Her hair hung in her face.
Blaze went to her, careful not to break anything because he was hulked out and thinking was hard. Really, what he wanted was to punch walls just to watch them break. He knew his knuckles would be okay. He felt indestructible.
Elle shoved him back and he struck the wall. “More. Trina, you have the syringes I gave you. You have one more, don’t you? I need more.”
Blaze glanced at his combat display, and Elle’s Onyx levels had rocketed back to ninety percent. Couldn’t be. It couldn’t be.
Then again, her entire system had been nearly destroyed after their battles in Hutchinson Prime, where she’d used both syringes and her consume spells to keep her cells loaded. Could she now pull Onyx from the very air around them? If that were the case, she’d hit a hundred percent and beyond by just breathing.
“Trina! Dammit, I want more!” Elle screeched.
“I don’t have any more,” Trina said calmly. “Elle, I used all three of the syringes I had. And you need to come down off that shit.”
“You don’t get to tell me anything, puta!” Elle gripped a magnet wrapped in thread and barked out a telekinesis spell. She hurled Trina into the wall.
Blaze seized his sister, but she shoved him back with her mind. He went sliding back down the hallway. If she hadn’t filled him to bursting with Onyx strength, he might’ve been pummeled to his knees by the unbelievable force of her power.
Instead, he fought her TK spell and walked toward her even as she tried to push him back. Elle and he had become like magnets, the same poles aligned—his movement forward forced her to glide backward down the hallway.
“Elle, get your shit together!” Blaze growled. His quadriceps filled with blood as his muscles flexed against the power of her mind. Every sinew in his body stood out as he pushed his way toward his sister. “You’re not going dark side. You’re going to get through this.”
She intensified her spell. Despite that, her Onyx levels didn’t dip. In fact, they climbed, heading toward one hundred percent and completely evil insanity.
Trina, Ling, Bill, and Fernando rushed forward to help.
From a pocket, Elle pulled handcuffs and hurled them. With a single syllable of Onyx speak, she cast a stasis spell and held all four of their friends in place. The vampire, the Meelah, and the Clicker brothers became statues in the hall.
Finally, her Onyx levels began to drop. She started to gasp at the exertion.
Blaze put one foot in front of the other in front of the other, pushing against her magic. Damn, but he looked good doing it. Every muscle was shredded. He’d always had a six-pack, but now his eight-pack abdominal muscles were showing. Dang, those were new.
From a pocket, she removed cedar slivers covered with a powder of dried blood and coffee beans. She was going to hit him with Onyx missiles.
Let her. He was so jacked and powerful, he’d snort them like Arlo’s wintergreen mint snuff.
The cargo bay slid open. Cali, in her ragged blue dress, crept toward them. Tears coursed down her face. “Elle, please, stop. Please.”
Despite the Onyx flames in her eyes, Elle was also crying. “Cali, don’t watch. Don’t watch me do this. We’re broken up. We’re done. I’m going to kill him, but you can’t watch.”
Blaze pushed against her energy more, but Elle stopped sliding. She took a fresh grip on him with her mental muscles. His next steps were like moving against a firehose set to full-on high pressure. But he was going to get to her. And he wasn’t going to die.
The gunny wasn’t sure what he would do once he got to his sister, but it felt good to use this body and fight her power.
Cali ran toward them.
She moved past Blaze. Elle was using all of her telekinetic power on him. Cali then held Elle to her, sobbing.
An instant later, Elle was sobbing as well. The TK forces emanating from her dissipated, and Blaze dropped down to one knee, both hands on the floor. He watched as his ripped arm muscles shrank back down to their normal size.
And Elle’s mojo was down to under two percent.
Both of the women were lost in an embrace, weeping, and Blaze stood and went to hold them both.
Elle and Cali were so alike, both tormented by power that could save the universe but destroy them in the process.
Finally, they stopped crying and turned their faces to him.
“I’m sorry,” Elle whispered, dropping her eyes.
Blaze grinned. “Dammit, Elle, you’re going to have to redo my tattoos. And I’ll miss that scar on my face. But I forgive you.”
The stasis spell had ended. Ling, Trina, and the Clicker brothers approached them. They were all together. They were all alive.
Bill held up the snare sphere, red lights flashing. He clicked.
Fernando translated. “My brother hates you, but he is proud of what we accomplished. We snared one of hell’s royalty, the archduchess of torture.”
“You did, Fernando.” Elle’s smile beamed on her tear-streaked face. “You had the mojo to catch her. And the serum worked for the shield spell. You did it, and I couldn’t be prouder of you.”
“You are fine teacher, Elle,” Fernando said. “But your spellcasting days are over. Look what happened to you. Even that small amount of Onyx disrupted both your mental and your physiological health. Elle, I love you, I adore you, I want us to be together forever, but I can’t be around you when you use Onyx.”
Elle dropped her head.
“The same goes for me,” Cali said. “It’s why we broke up. You change, Elle. And I don’t like the e
vil you. It’s like how you don’t like the evil me.”
“I won’t do it again,” Elle said. “It’s just…Blaze…he might have died. And Fernando, you can’t do healing spells. We’ve tried.”
“Yes,” Fernando clicked, “but luckily I’m a very proficient physician with Humans being my specialty. I could’ve used surgery to give Blaze a new shoulder. There are implants. And with Lizzie being somewhat helpful in such biotechnologies, his new shoulder might’ve been better.”
As if to drive home the point, Bill spun his main left arm into a fusion cannon, then a hand, then pinchers as Lizzie’s necrotechnology helped him transform his arm into various useful items.
Blaze, though, didn’t want Lizzie to mess with his anatomy. He wasn’t sure he trusted the demon-possessed computer.
And what it had said about the Etrusca ruin. That still haunted him.
Blaze let out a sigh. “Elle, you need to sleep. As for the rest of us, let’s meet on the bridge in a couple of hours. We need a debriefing. And we need to contact Ambassador Randi to get our paycheck, though I’m not sure I trust her. Shenyang Prime was a trap. We need to know who set us up.”
Lizzie’s voice came on comms. “Hhhappily, we will reach GaMeSpa in two days. Arlo shhhould be thhhere. Ambassador Randi sent us a communication while you were fighting on Shenyang. She has begun the extradition process with the Meelah.”
Arlo. Blaze had to calm himself. First, they would get the information on the Onyx Gate, the when to Granny’s where, and then he would punch his foster father in the face.
Before that, a shower. And Elle would have to redo his tattoos, especially the one that prevented demons from possessing him. Now that they had the archduchess of torture trapped on board, they couldn’t be too careful.
They all split up, healed thanks to Elle’s relapse. Bill tromped off on his metal leg to hit the engine room, where he’d sweet-talk Lizzie. Ling went to eat Meelah leaves in his room and meditate. Fernando stowed the two snare spheres holding the succubus and Nauzea in the cellar’s antechamber. The cellar was where they held the ghosts, demons, and other ghouls they captured. Normally, Elle cast a snare sphere spell, the baddies were collected in the orb, and then they transferred the Onyx energy into the cellar. The nastiest crap in the galaxy was in there, under lock and key.
Fernando might not have the mojo to oversee the actual transfer, so they’d wait until Elle got her head on straight. Given the circumstances, that might be a long time.
The Clicker doctor wanted to run tests on his physiology to investigate how his cells had reacted to the serum. Cali went to her room, as did Trina, neither able to look the other in the eye.
Elle went to the bridge. They all swore to check in on her. They didn’t want her being alone in her room since she might relapse again. When you’re an addict, time alone is a dangerous thing.
Blaze hit the showers. It was a tiled room on the bottom deck, and it used recycled water. You couldn’t think too long about what that meant, recycled water. You just had to trust that Lizzie could filter everything you didn’t want to think about out. Five showerheads hit him from every side, and while it had been designed for multiple individuals to shower there, Blaze like to turn them all on and be awash in hot water.
All of his scars were gone, and he missed them. He’d taken shrapnel during the Bug War and had a zigzag scar on his thigh. It was gone, as was all his ink and birthmarks. Elle had hit him hard…damn, she’d pretty much regenerated him.
What if she hadn’t stopped? How big would he have gotten?
He had no idea, but the thought was intriguing. He stopped himself. No, Fernando would eventually learn the healing spells and the major Onyx arcana. His sister would eventually have the willpower to run missions with just her katanas and her pistols. It would all work out.
But what if Fernando went down the evil path of Onyx addiction? With that Clicker mind of his, would he have the morality to step back from the abyss? Maybe, maybe not, but Bill would always be around to keep him sane. Bill hated everyone not Phasmida onboard the Lizzie, but he loved his brother.
Blaze had soaped himself up, hair, body, everything. It was kind of girly, but he liked soaps and shampoos, liked them a lot. He had a collection of spicy scents and expensive shampoos. He’d used Astral Corps cleansing powder for years on end. It was a delousing, antibacterial detergent, as scratchy as washing with cactus needles. He’d smelled like Comet powder most days. Having silky smooth bath products was a treat.
No one knew about his soap thing, though. Not Elle, not Ling, no one. It was a secret Blaze would take to his pinche grave.
He was blind when someone walked in. He heard their bare feet slapping on the tiles.
It wasn’t Ling, his feet had prehensile claws. Wasn’t the Clickers because their foot stalks wouldn’t slap. Which meant it was either Cali, Trina, or Elle.
Shit, couldn’t be Elle, could it? With how erratic she’d been, it was a distinct possibility.
Blaze didn’t bother to cover his junk. He washed his face off, then blinked the soap out of his eyes. He hoped whoever it was didn’t look too hard in his shower basket.
It was Trina, and she was Human, and naked. She reached for him and drew him close. She sniffed his skin. “You smell good. Special soap?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Don’t really care. What are you doing here?”
Trina nipped his neck.
Blaze had to check her mojo levels, really quick, to make sure she wasn’t about to try and snack on him. No, her levels were good. She was above eighty percent. When she dropped below fifty, that was when she got aggressive. She must’ve been snacking on the blood bags they’d bought on Earth after collecting Elle. Their galley had become part kitchen, part blood bank.
Trina’s skin was soft and warm. Hot water dripped down her body. She was heaven on cute pink feet, but something wasn’t right.
“Trina, no, what are you doing here?” he asked.
She laid her head on his chest. “I came in here to be sexy with you, but I can’t stop seeing you and Cali together in my head. Are you really over her?” she asked.
Blaze had expected the jealousy, but he’d hoped to avoid it. Couldn’t she be upset about being left behind in the elevator lobby? He’d have even preferred angst over her vampiric double nature. No such luck.
“That kiss you saw?” he said. “It was nothing. We were going up against a succubus. That’s what sex demons do. They dick with your lusts. Both of us weren’t in our right minds.”
“What about before?” Trina asked. “In the private room, in front of the fire, on that couch with the animal fur. What about then? The succubus was there, but she didn’t appear as me. She used Cali to seduce you.”
“How do you even know about that?” Blaze asked.
The vampire paused, eyes uncertain for a moment. “It…Nauzea, she showed me. It was her. You wanted her. And Cali wants you.”
“No, she doesn’t,” Blaze insisted. “And why are we having this conversation naked, in the shower, wasting water?”
“Oh, it’s recycled. It comes right back out along with our toilet water,” Trina said stiffly. “Don’t change the subject. Why did the succubus use Cali?”
Blaze growled, “I don’t know. Maybe the succubus wanted to hurt us both, since she was also serving Nauzea as her Konobus or whatever. That’s probably it. Bottom line, I haven’t slept with Cali, or anyone else, since we got together. Been a little busy. And I don’t cheat on the women I’m with. I watched Arlo do that, and I saw the pain it caused. You and I are together, right?”
“I can’t believe you can be monogamous. I’ve heard stories about how you’ve screwed your way halfway across the galaxy. You can’t even remember the names of the women you’ve slept with.” Trina’s green eyes were hard bits of pissed-off emeralds in her red, angry face.
“That’s not true.”
She backed away from him. Her red hair now drenched dark. But everything else was
pink and freckled and lovely. She was so womanly in all the right ways. “What was the name of the poor skank who turned into the spider demon that ruined your room?”
Blaze squinted. “Serena? Selena? Dionne? Diane? No. I know. It was Samantha…Sarah…Selackabecky.”
“Selackabecky?”
He sighed. “Okay, you’re right. I’m bad with names. And when I’m single, you best believe I’m fucking single. But when I make a commitment to someone, I keep it.” Blaze let his eyes travel down her body and then back to her face. “We’re together, aren’t we? The way I feel about you, the way you feel about me, it feels like we’re together.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know if you’re my boyfriend, or you’re just a dish on a motherfucking buffet. You’re either food or a fuck, and I’m having trouble distinguishing between the two.” Trina turned and walked out of the showers and into the hallway.
“Nombre de Dios, Trina,” Blaze cursed. He followed her right out, dripping water and not caring. “Don’t do this. Don’t let the succubus win.”
Trina whirled. “Why Cali?”
Cali’s door slid open and the werewolf walked out, a robe covering her. Both Trina and Blaze stood in the hall, dripping. Cali took them in, nodded, and then asked, “I keep hearing my name. Not sure I want to get in the middle of this. But does this mean you’re done in the shower? I’ve been waiting.”
“Shut up, Cali,” Trina spat and stormed down the hall, hips wiggling and every muscle so slick and nice under her womanly curves.
Both Blaze and Cali watched the display.
At her door, the very nude Trina spun. “And don’t think we’re having any kind of threesomes on this pinche crazy ship. It’s not happening!”
Then she disappeared into the library. If she could’ve slammed the door, she would’ve. Instead, it slid closed with a gentle swoosh, which probably didn’t improve her mood any.
“Even though I hate her, she’s hot,” Cali said quietly. “Did you see that ass? But I’m thinking she’s the jealous kind. Like you. It was your issue, you know. Me, Elle, you, it would’ve worked. You freaked out. And when you broke up with me, Elle snapped, so I snapped.”