by Lina Jubilee
“The least I could do after the beautiful peep show,” his projection had offered. If a smack on his spectral shoulder had had any impact, I would have done it to punish him for making light of it.
It hadn’t felt light. If anything, it had felt so close to having him in the room near me. I wondered if I would ever have to masturbate alone from now on—what, after experiencing his feather-light assistance in the activity, would be the point?
I felt a wry chuckle cross the bond and I blinked, realizing with a start that just because he’d promised to keep quiet for a bit didn’t mean he wasn’t “listening” over the bond.
After splashing my face with cold water, I brushed my teeth, my bleary eyes staring back at me in the mirror. My dark brown hair was wild, messy, like a dozen hands had just woven through it.
“Really?” came Zander’s voice in my head. “You want a harem of six men now?”
I pictured daggers. Shooting from my eyes.
“Right,” he said over the bond. “Sorry. Busy day today anyway.”
Sighing, I hung my toothbrush back on the rack I shared with Roulette and Chastity and spit in the sink. A busy day for the Renegades didn’t spell anything but bad news.
I ran my hairbrush through the knotted strands. Apparently even spectral hands could get it all tangled up.
The old recreation center was smaller than one might think when serving an entire community—I supposed that was why they’d rebuilt across town and sold this property. I shared a fairly large dorm room with Chastity and Roulette, and Nash, Darien, and Wade were in the room beside ours. Wade spent more than half his evenings at a condo downtown with his boyfriend, though, so Darien and Roulette often shacked up together, with Nash getting the short end of the stick and sleeping on the couch in the living room beside the kitchen. Or sometimes Chastity slept there if Nash and I were similarly occupied—then there were the nights Chastity stayed out “with friends.” I had no reason to doubt this team had anything but really healthy amounts of sexual activity—everyone except Jayden, that was.
And he would sadly never take me up on my offer to fix that.
Wade had a theory he’d once voiced to the group at large—minus Jayden—that our mentor was asexual, in which case he might not be interested in anyone, let alone me. But there were different degrees of asexuality… Like demi-ace. That might explain why Zander had been so insistent Jayden had a crush on me.
I shook my head and finished running my brush through my hair. I had enough going on. And I had enough sexual partners to choose from. I walked back into the room and swapped my pajama sweats for tight jeans and an off-the-shoulder white sweater. No need to look like a scrub just because I felt like one.
Giggles echoed from the hallway as a door opened and shut. I’d recognize that laugh anywhere.
“Rou,” I said, meeting her and Darien outside the dorm room door. Both were dressed already—or maybe that was what they’d slept in after changing out of their battle suits following last night’s briefing. They looked stunning as usual either way. “I need to go to town,” I said. “Come with?”
Her lips pinched as she exchanged a look with her boyfriend. He ran a palm over his scruffy cheek. Tattoos across his fingers spelled out “Lita”—not a former girlfriend, but in honor if his beloved abuelita, his deceased grandma who’d lived with his family growing up. She’d been the most supportive member of his family when it came to his Natch powers. “I can wait,” he said.
So I’d be messing up a brunch date? No. Heaven knew we all needed more of those.
“Never mind,” I said. “Actually, maybe you can help me anyway—” I met Darien’s eyes as I grabbed Roulette by the elbow, widening my peepers and hoping he took a hint. “I’ll go grab some coffee,” he said, giving us some space.
“Thank you,” I said. He was a total sweetheart. A little part of me was jealous of Roulette for snagging him, but I was jealous that he got to monopolize my amazing friend, too. They were such a great match.
Roulette’s gaze wandered up and down, clearly enjoying watching him go.
I dropped her elbow and leaned closer to whisper. “Do you have any Plan B?”
That got her attention. “Uh, why? Is Chastity asking?”
She might have been the better person to ask, actually, since I didn’t think she was on regular birth control like Roulette, but she seemed to have spent the night out with friends.
“No. For me. I, uh—” I opened my mouth to speak, but it went dry. A yawn from behind me almost made me jump out of my skin and I turned to find Nash shirtless, his bare feet sticking out from beneath his flannel pants and padding across the hard floor. “Morning, ladies,” he said as he scratched his abdomen. The dark blond fuzz around his belly button leading down to what I knew to be a thick and satisfying member sent butterflies roaring through my stomach.
“Morning,” said Roulette. Her lips soured and she jutted her head toward him, arching her eyebrows as if to say, “Does he know?”
I tried to shake my head as subtlety as possible. Nash still seemed to pick up on it, though, because he kept walking, but his pace slowed and he hovered near the entrance to the men’s dorm room, staring at me as he slowly opened the door.
Rolling my eyes, I cupped my hands around my mouth and whispered in Roulette’s ear. “Just in case. Jayden thought, well, when I lost my power yesterday, I might have been able to fertilize eggs normally—”
“What?!” Roulette pulled back and shouted.
I hissed at her to keep quiet and she covered her mouth with her hands, muttering, “Sorry” as Nash padded back over to us.
“What’s going on?” he asked. It seemed painfully obvious he was trying to keep things casual, but his Adam’s apple bobbed as he crossed his arms stiffly against his sculpted chest.
Roulette bit her lip and turned to me. “I don’t have any, so yeah, let’s go.” She laid a gentle hand on my forearm. “I’ll get some coffee and we can go.”
She pushed between Nash and me to head down the hallway. I turned over my shoulder. “Darien can come with us,” I said. “I just need a lift downtown. I can take the bus back since the Vespa is…” I left the rest unsaid. I knew the cleanup team had grabbed it and tossed it in the back of the van, but it would need a lot of work before it was roadworthy again and Wade was far too occupied to bother with it.
Nash pointed his chin in her direction. “Why are you third wheeling on their date? If you need to go somewhere, I can take you in the van if they’ve got the jeep.”
“And leave Wade and Jayden and Chastity if she shows up without a vehicle? No.” I shook my head. “It’s not that important.”
The space between his brows furrowed, and the concerned look made him even sexier, if that were possible. “If it’s not that important, what’s with all the secrecy?”
“I just… I just don’t want everyone to know.”
“Just Roulette.”
“Yeah… And Jayden, I guess.”
That had been the wrong thing to say. He tried not to look hurt, but the way his shoulders slumped gave it away. “Oh,” he said, his voice cracking.
“I probably have to tell Wade, too,” I said, sighing, “and Roulette will likely tell Darien.” Damn it. “It’s just… Jayden suggested I get some Plan B.”
Nash shook his head multiple times. “What is a Plan B?”
Ugh, men. Sometimes they’re just too ignorant about things that could lead to eighteen years of child support. “The morning after pill?” I tried.
Realization flooded his features, which relaxed as his jaw gaped open. “For you?”
“Yeah…” My throat went dry. “Just as a precaution.”
“But you don’t need birth control,” he said. “You can’t—” His mouth clamped shut. “Yesterday. When it turned out you’d lost your powers. You and I…”
“Yeah,” I said again.
“Then it would be mine,” he said, swallowing.
“It could not exist. I
t most likely doesn’t exist. Even if I were a Typical, it wouldn’t be formed this early on. That’s why there are ‘morning after’ pills to begin with.” Suddenly hot, I let out a deep breath and fanned my face with my hands.
Nash took my hands in his, his eyes searching my expression—for what, I didn’t know. “But you… you always thought it wasn’t going to happen.” His voice went quieter. “What if… What if this is your one chance?”
Swallowing, I gasped at the flush that spread out from my core. “Even if I wanted this, there’s no guarantee now that I have my powers back that my uterus would be a hospitable environment for an egg—”
“If you wanted it?”
Were we really about to have this conversation? “Nash, would you seriously be ready to be a dad right now? With everything we have going on in our lives? What kind of environment would Veras be for a child?”
“We wouldn’t have to stay,” he said, a tiny muscle on his jaw twitching as he closed his mouth. “We may be Natches, but there are countless of our kind out there, living normal lives.”
“No,” I said, pulling my hands away and clenching my sweaty palms at my side. My blood ran cold. “I don’t—Nash, I don’t want to go. I don’t want to be a mom. Not now—maybe not ever. I don’t know. I’m not even thinking about that right now. And if I ever did, I’d be fine with adoption. If I ever got to a point in my life when I want to pack up and retire, walk away from our friends—”
“We wouldn’t be walking away,” he said. “We’d be moving on with our lives. We’d still be in touch, maybe even be on standby if things got really bad, but we could get away from this city, away from the danger caused by these crazy plant elves—”
“There’s no running away from this danger, Nash.” Shaking my head, I took a step back. “We could run off to the middle of nowhere, but that doesn’t mean that the elves would never extend beyond the city’s borders. That doesn’t mean I could just cook meals and clean house and not worry about my friends on the frontline.”
He threw his hands up. “Who said anything about making you into Suzy Homemaker?” Scoffing, he shook his head. “I know you have no interest in marrying me. I wasn’t asking that.”
“No, you were just asking me to run off with you and raise a child together. What a big difference.” I didn’t mean to let the sarcasm be so biting in my voice, but it came out anyway.
“And lord knows no one can ask you to give up even the slightest chance you might shack up with our team leader someday,” snapped Nash.
Of course, Jayden chose that moment to open his office door—but since he was still some distance down the hall, I doubted he’d heard us. Even so, he was headed our way and I didn’t want to continue this conversation within earshot. I didn’t even want him to pick up on the roaring tension between Nash and me.
“Fuck you, Nash,” I said, though it hurt me to say it. I turned on my heel, yanking my hand away even as Nash grabbed it, his voice going softer.
“Angel, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
But I pulled harder, heading to the kitchen without a word.
Though I’d promised Roulette and Darien I’d be out of their hair the moment we parked, Roulette insisted on coming into the drug store with me. Darien waited in the jeep out front, chatting with some friends from back home on Skype.
“Did you tell him what we’re here for?” I asked in a hushed whisper as we got in line for the pharmacy.
“No, but he’s not stupid,” she said. She picked up a box of pain relievers that touted “strong enough to work on Natch pain” and raised an eyebrow. Wade had warned us away from any products claiming to work on Natches in particular. Our body chemistries were basically human and our powers added and took away different things in our DNA. There was no way to manufacture something for all of us. And since we were only about twenty percent of the population—so far—I wondered why any company even thought it profitable to tweak their products to attempt to appeal to us in particular. Especially since it probably turned away more Typicals than it gained in new Natch customers. “I assume he figures we’re not all cloak and dagger about running to the store for tampons,” she murmured. “Plus, with us all learning about the power-sucking princess…”
The man in front of us glanced over his shoulder, a scowl dragging down his lips, and I elbowed Roulette to get her attention.
“What?” she said, putting the box of pain reliever back on the shelf. “Do you have a problem with powers, sir?”
Wincing, I cradled my forehead.
The man muttered something unintelligible and faced forward.
“That’s what I thought,” spat Roulette.
“Rou,” I said quietly, “let’s just get what we need without brawling with half the county—”
If she had a retort, though, I didn’t hear it over the rumble outside. The bottles and boxes on the shelves on either side of us shook and scattered to the floor.
“Oh, shit!” I did hear her scream that.
The man in front of us covered his head with his arm and ducked, cursing.
When the rumble went quiet, the lights overhead flickering, the murmurs and gasping from everywhere in the building settled into my bones.
“Damn you fucking Natches,” began the man in front of us, sitting upright and dropping his hands. His shiny forehead glistened and he jostled his glasses as he went to wipe the sweat away.
“It’s the Nelians!” cried a woman from the front of the store. “A giant vine just passed by—everyone, evacuate!”
A child began bawling and Roulette’s head snapped toward the sound, her hand extended. The man who’d been blaming Natches narrowed his eyes and shoved her aside, scrambling to his feet to head for the exit.
“Asshole!” shouted Roulette. I helped an elderly woman stand, my leg muscles straining with the effort, and Roulette scurried toward the crying sound.
“Aurora!” she shouted, waving me over a few aisles down. The pharmacists and techs bulldozed past the old woman and me, though one stopped to help me support her. “Go,” he said, noticing my friend waving me down.
I nodded and left her to him, skidding past packages of adult diapers to join Roulette. The kid at her feet—a boy probably no older than eight or so—had a bone sticking out of his arm, an overturned shelf next to him perhaps the culprit for the disaster.
“Fuck,” I said, looking for a parent anywhere. All I found were streaks of the kid’s blood.
Roulette was already pointing her hand at the ground. “Let’s do this,” she shouted amidst the chaos. The ground continued to shake as there was another rumble.
“God damn it,” I swore. “Why the hell are they launching an attack two days in a row?”
Nelians downtown today, I sent to Zander through the bond, quickly picturing his head over my groin and hoping he was thinking about me. I’m at a pharmacy. I don’t know where they are, but we’re definitely feeling the effects here.
“Shit,” he said back. “On our way.”
I focused on the here and now. Roulette let out a gasp as her hand blasted a hole in the floor. “Dammit,” she said, closing her hand and turning it off. “Again!” Same problem. She swore harder as the boy’s cries grew louder. Finally, her hand shot out a white light and nothing shattered. “Yes!” she shouted, pivoting back toward the child. He flinched, maybe thinking she was about to send a hole through him, but she directed it at his arm. Slowly, the bone started moving and the boy let out a bloodcurdling scream.
“I know, baby,” said Roulette. “It’ll hurt, but then I’ll fix it. Rora—”
She didn’t have to ask. I took her face between my hands and shifted it toward me, planting a five-second kiss on her lips.
Her hand glowed brighter and I let go. The healing went really fast then, the kid screaming as his bones locked into place, his sinews mended and his skin connected. Finally, he gasped, the tears stopping.
“Fuck yeah!” said Aurora, jumping up and closing her palm, s
hutting off the light.
I grabbed her by the arm. “Let’s get him out of here,” I said, just as a shrieking woman ran toward us, almost losing her balance in the blood.
“Henry!” She took him in her arms.
That took care of that.
“Mom, these girls saved me—” started the boy, but his mom was totally ignoring him, dragging him to his feet by the elbow and making their way to the front of the store.
For a moment, I wondered if he’d bother to tell her we’d practically made out to do it, too.
“Come on,” said Roulette. On instinct, she lifted her wrist to her mouth, but without her battle suit on, she was missing her comm.
“Babe!” shouted Darien from the doorway. We hurried to meet him, Roulette falling into his arms and flinching as a giant vine soared past the window. “Shit!” he cried as Veras’ jeep tumbled over with the movement.
“We’re not headed home until this is over anyway,” said Roulette, her brows scrunched together, her face resolute.
“I called it in,” said Darien, tugging on her to leave the store. “Chastity is closest, and the others are on their way.”
We hit the street then, the rumble of the vines moving downtown louder and more perilous beneath our feet—as were the echoes of the screams as people ran away.
The fact that no one had yet died in one of these attacks was a miracle. Benevolent elf princess or not, they got no credit for that in my book.
“There!” shouted Roulette, pointing down the street to a spot several blocks away. An elf stood at the corner, her arms wide, vines growing outward from them.
“The fucker,” said Darien, dropping his hands from Roulette’s waist. He started sprinting, shooting ice at the vine along the way.
“Boost me,” said Roulette, turning toward me. I did, quickly pecking her on the lips before we started running and she aimed her open palm at the vine, her shoulder slamming into a retreating man and both completely ignoring the encounter. “Damn it!” she said when the vine started blossoming flowers instead of getting blown to bits. The luck of the draw had been a healing blast, not a destructive one. Apparently, her healing powers even worked on flora, and with my boost, those flowers were curling outward fast.