by Nya Rayne
Strong arms slipped around her waist, and soft, full lips planted a kiss on the side of her neck. She sighed again, her head lowering as she tried to meld herself with him. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”
She felt his warm breath on her cheek as he pulled her closer. “You have nothing to apologize for, sweetness. We knew there was a chance this could happen. We talked about it, and we decided the risk was worth the reward, didn’t we?”
“I know, but Phia…you…” She brought her hands up to her face, the desire to scream almost unbearable. “What was I thinking? Why didn’t I give her a PAP, like she wanted? Why couldn’t I let things be?” She shook her head, turned in his arms, and buried her face in his chest. “I had you, and it was enough. Jesus, Darius, what are we going to do? What have I done to all of us?”
“Lorraine, stop it,” Darius said, his baritone voice leaving very little to be discussed. He rubbed her back as he spoke low, “You know why you did what you did. I also hated to see the man taken like some kind of rabid dog, and I wish I could have saved him. But I don’t regret what you put into action, regardless of the outcome.”
She looked up at him. “They’re going to take you from me, Darius. Our life here is going to end. They’re going to take Phia and do heaven knows what to make sure she never speaks a word of what she knows, and they’re going to—”
“No one is going to take me from you,” he declared, cutting her tirade off.
“That’s exactly what Donté told Phia, and look what happened. He’s with them, and she’s here crying her eyes out.”
Smoky gray eyes smiled down at her before he leaned down and kissed her in the center of her forehead. “Yeah, well, Donté didn’t have time to get a playroom, did he?”
She knew he was hinting at his homemade arsenal of finely crafted bows, bokkens, spears, and razor-sharp knives and swords which were as good as, if not better than, the ones used by the ancients. Weapons had long ago been outlawed and all the guns gathered and destroyed. Darius, with all the time that he had on his hands when she was away, had performed extensive research on just about every hand weapon known to man. He had taught himself to make and operate nearly all of them. Each time she asked him about his unnatural fascination with such barbaric devices, his answer was a wry smile and, “Well, we can’t infiltrate the Zoo empty-handed, can we?”
The man was a master with all types of metals and woods. He could carve out the most beautiful figurines with exquisite detail, and then turn around and create the deadliest weapons with the same intensity and dedication. It mystified her at times as she watched him work. During those times, he was nothing less than a man entranced in the creation of something only he could comprehend.
“This is no time to be joking, Darius.” She stepped away from him and glanced up at her sprawling one-story home, which sat on an acre and a half of what was once one of many Loxahatchee swamps.
“You’re right, but it makes no sense for both of us to be upset, does it? The way I see it, we need to move against them before they can put together a plan for coming after us.”
“Is Phia still asleep?”
“She was when I came out here. It must have been some powerful stuff you gave her to calm her down. She’s been sleeping for hours now.”
“It should be wearing off shortly.” Dr. Lobush brought her hand to her mouth, and started to chew on the bed of her nail.
Darius stepped close to her, the heat of his warm body misting over her. He took her hand in his and asked, “What are you hiding?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You only chew on your fingernail when you’re hiding something. What is it?”
She looked up at him and then back at the house and the dark window of the room Phia was in. Her hand dropping from her mouth, she said regretfully, “I think she’s pregnant, Darius. She has all the early signs and some she shouldn’t have for weeks to come, but they’re there.”
“Are you sure? Have you examined her?”
“No, she won’t let me. She thinks she’s feeling ill because of everything going on.” Pulling her hand from his, she began pacing, as she tended to do when she was stressed. “My gut tells me she’s pregnant, and my gut is never wrong.” She stopped, looked at him, and finished, “I reviewed her medical records, Darius. She’s highly fertile. When you pair her with Donté, there’s no doubt what’s going to happen.”
Darius shoved his hands into the pockets of his shorts and stared up at the sky, his short, black, closely tapered hair glistening in the moonlight. “Did you know this before you paired them?” His tone held a hint of disapproval.
“Yes. No. I don’t know,” she said in frustration, and added, “but I didn’t want them to take Donté. I thought they would be living together as one when she got pregnant. I wanted the world to find out and ask questions, but I didn’t want this. I didn’t want…”
The sound of a door opening and slamming shut drew their attention, and they turned and watched as Phia stepped off the porch, her bag in her hand, her head held high as she strode to the solitary dirt road leading to and from their estate.
Dr. Lobush started toward her. “Phia, where are you going?”
The woman in question turned then, her eyes vibrant with rage, her face red and swollen from hours of crying. “Don’t come near me. You left him there for them to take and then you dope me up with that stuff and make me sleep for hours while they’re doing whatever it is they’re going to do to him.”
“We had no choice. If we had stayed, what would it have accomplished?” Dr. Lobush asked, coming to a stop a few feet from her.
“I had no choice! I was trying to help him! Your buffoon stopped me! But you, you and him—” She pointed a trembling finger at Darius, who’d stopped a few feet behind Dr. Lobush. “The two of you did nothing to help Donté. Nothing!” She turned and headed down the walkway again. “Stay away from me!”
“If we had stayed any longer, they would have gotten Darius, too,” Dr. Lobush said before she could stop herself.
Phia turned, new rage burning in her eyes. She took a few steps back closer to the doctor. The bag slipped from her grasp as her fists clenched and released. “You selfish bitch, you sacrificed my companion for your own?” It came out as a growl, and the doctor stepped back.
“No, that’s not what I meant,” Dr. Lobush tried to clarify as Phia frantically crossed to her, her arms out and grabbing for the doctor’s neck.
Darius stepped between them, grabbed Phia’s arms and pinned them to her side. “She did nothing you wouldn’t have done,” he said.
Phia thrashed against him and muttered incoherent threats. Darius pulled her to his chest as she continued to flail about. He patted her back. “Calm yourself and listen to me.” His voice was husky and melodic, calming. “We haven’t given up on Donté. We will never give up on him, but in order for us to do anything about it, we’re going to need you to calm down and listen.”
Phia pushed away from him. She stumbled back, nearly falling as she wiped at her eyes with the backs of her hands. She glared from Dr. Lobush to Darius, her chest heaving. “I don’t trust either of you.”
“Okay, under the circumstances I can understand why.” Darius held his hands up and moved cautiously in her direction as if he were approaching a crazed animal. “But we have a plan to get him back, Ms. Zen. We’re just going to need your help.”
Dr. Lobush glared at the back of her husband’s head. She knew of no plan, and if there was one, he damn sure hadn’t discussed it with her.
Phia seemed skeptical, but she relaxed her stance. “What plan? We don’t even know where he is.”
Darius smiled and pointed at Lorraine. “We don’t know where he is, but my wife does.”
Dr. Lobush nearly fell face first into the dirt at his audacity. To state such a thing when she truly had…Her thought process started slowly, before a light bulb went off. She turned to Phia, her hands c
lapping in elation before her. “He’s right. I do know where he is. I had forgotten, but the day he got his memories back, I installed a tracking chip in case he decided to wander off.”
“You what?” Phia asked. “You installed a what in Donté? How dare you!”
Dr. Lobush skipped forward, leaned up, and kissed Darius on the cheek. “I knew there was a reason I told you everything,” she said before dashing to the house.
When she returned, she punched a few buttons on her locator pad and brought up a black grid with green lines. She then keyed in a few numbers and letters and watched as a yellow blip jumped to life on the screen. Holding the device out for Phia to take, she stated, “See? Look, that’s Donté. Based on his vitals, he’s sleeping, which means they haven’t done anything to change him yet.” She stepped closer to Phia who was staring down at the screen, her face full of questions. “Had they changed him, his blood pressure and vitals would be a lot lower than they are now. Medically, he would appear as if he was at death’s door, but his vitals are strong.”
Phia pulled the device away from Dr. Lobush. “What does this mean?”
Darius said, “It means we know where he is and what state of consciousness he’s in at all times. It means we can get to him and they won’t even know we’re coming.”
“Where is he?” Phia asked. “I don’t understand what these numbers mean. I know its longitude and latitude, but—”
Dr. Lobush glanced down at the screen before stepping back. “If I’m not mistaken, he’s in Cocoa Beach, which means he’s more than four hundred miles from the nearest conversion center.”
“Since we know where he is, let’s go get him,” Phia insisted, her eyes sparkling with hope.
“Before we do, we have to make certain of a few things.” Darius stepped closer to Phia, slipped his arm around her shoulders, and started back to the house as Dr. Lobush stepped over to pick up the bag Phia had dropped. “So, I hear your mother is a baroness,” he began.
Gloria glared at the small HD screen for the hundredth time, her nostrils flaring, her clawlike fingers gripping the arm of the chair she was sitting in so tight her knuckles turned white.
Thou shalt honor the Higher Highness above all others!
Did they believe they could deceive her? Did they think she wouldn’t find them? Did Lorraine actually believe she could pawn that worthless, used piece of trash Miguel back off on her and run away with Xavier without her knowledge?
They couldn’t have thought she was that naïve. What they didn’t know, what no one knew, she marked each and every personomale she’d ever used. Miguel, the one she’d sent back to the facility to be destroyed, had been marked inside the crack of his ass. She’d placed a small V there for vivacious, because in the beginning he was nothing if not a spirited lover.
She scowled at the dark-haired woman she’d learned through the facial recognition software was Phia Zen. She was leaning into Xavier, her arm interlaced with his as they walked, chattering with the doctor and the nameless, honey-skinned man walking a few feet before them.
Thou shalt speak when spoken to!
She knew the name Zen, but couldn’t place it, and had ordered Lady LaDina to investigate it. She would get her answer and when she did, she would make the woman pay for her impudence. As for the doctor, well, that would be a dish best served cold and with a newly-acquired screwdriver.
What disturbed her most was the man with the doctor. He was not in any of their databases. He moved like a PAP, but his eyes were too lively, too vibrant to be a true PAP. She had to wonder if the doctor had stolen him in the same manner she had stolen Xavier, and if she had, then why hadn’t this been discovered sooner?
She watched as Xavier turned to look behind him as the FAP called his name, and she froze the screen on his face as she leaned forward, her fingers tracing over the image as if she would be able to feel the heat of his body beneath the pads of her fingers.
Thou shalt not covet the Higher Highness’s possessions!
A soft chime sounded in the room and she answered, her tone clipped. “Yes?”
“You have an urgent call from Baroness Zen. She says it’s about her daughter, Phia.”
Gloria scowled at the voice and looked back down at the frozen screen of Xavier’s face. Leaning forward, she pressed a button and scanned back, stopping on the face of the dark-haired woman with eyes the color of night itself. “Phia Zen,” she seethed as memories of her recent night in the Carolinas came flooding back to her. “Bitch!”
“Your Highness, would you like me to put the call through?”
She reached for her ear bud, placed it in her ear, and said, “Yes, please connect it, and use the private link.”
Before she could greet the woman, Varonda Zen began speaking, her high-pitched tone akin to the scraping of nails across an old-fashioned chalkboard, “Your Highness, my deepest apologies for any trouble my irresponsible and ill-natured daughter may have caused you. I extend to you my deepest, deepest apologies. I want to assure you we will do whatever necessary to make this right.”
Gloria was a little more than taken aback by the woman. How could she be calling her and apologizing for something that hadn’t been and wouldn’t ever be made news to anyone outside of the Elites? Could Phia have called her mother and told her? If she had, this could pose more than a little problem for everyone involved. Baronesses were not privy to the goings-on in the world of the Elites until after they retired, so if she knew more than she should know, then she would have to be dealt with along with her thieving daughter.
“Apologies are unnecessary, Baroness Zen,” she started as she leaned back in her high, leather-backed chair, her fingers steepled before her. “However, they are appreciated. I must ask, though, as this is Elite business, what did your daughter tell you about the incident?”
As the woman spoke, visions of a naked, thrashing Phia Zen and a sweaty, engorged Xavier Donté played through Gloria’s mind, causing her ire to spike and the already frazzled tassels of her sanity to unravel just a little more. She sank her nails into the soft leather of the chair she was sitting in as a soft, evil voice sang the last of the commandments:
Thou shalt…not…fornicate!
On this particular occasion, it mattered not where the fornication occurred. The only thing that mattered was that Phia Zen knew not her place and had dared to touch what was not hers. If anyone was ever in desperate need of tutelage, she certainly was.
Chapter Twenty
Consciousness trickled back to Donté like molasses from a jar recently taken out of a deep freeze. The first thing he became aware of was his heartbeat, slow and methodic, and then sounds fluttered back to him in a mixture of soft beeps and murmurs of voices he didn’t recognize.
“How could something like this happen?” She was to the right of him, he realized.
“From what I heard, the doctor who was on call at his intake facility grew smitten with him,” another woman said, her tone low but with an edge to it.
“I suppose we all become infatuated with them from time to time, don’t we?”
“That’s beside the point. What could she have been thinking?” the woman with the edge asked, and then continued, “We took an oath and no matter how much we want to try them out, we can’t.”
Donté wanted to growl at them. He wanted to make sure they understood he was not goods to be sold or test-driven, but he realized as much as he wanted to move, he couldn’t. His body felt leaden and lethargic. It wasn’t his own to control.
Fear gripped him at the thought they had altered him, and he tried to force his eyes open. It was a tiring process, but eventually they did crack open, and he was instantly blinded by artificial light. He closed his eyes and forced not a sound to leave his mouth as the women continued to talk about him.
“The story is a little sketchy, but I heard there was another woman traveling with him and the doctor. The Higher Highness has put a clearance level on her name for some reason.”
The other woman’s voice drew closer to his left side as she spoke. “I wonder what that’s about.”
“Don’t know. You think whoever she is and the doctor are going to disappear like the others?” the woman to his right said, and Donté could feel a tingling sensation, which hurt like hell, start in his toes and spread through the top of his feet to his ankles.
A long uncomfortable silence fell over the room before the other woman said in a whisper, “Women have disappeared for a lot less, haven’t they?”
“So, you think the stories are true, too? I mean, I didn’t know any of the others, but Tawny didn’t seem like the type to mount a companion. She was real mousy, you know? Kind of homely looking, wanting to stay under the radar.”
“The way I heard it, she tripped. The one, Aro, caught her before she fell and did any real damage to herself. What got her in trouble was when she said ‘thank you’ to him. I heard the Higher Highness spazzed and started slinging accusations at her about not following the commandments. When Tawny tried to verbally defend herself, the Higher Highness slapped her. That was the last time anyone saw Tawny.”
“Jesus, well, if I’m ever falling, I hope they’ll let me crack my damn head open,” the woman to his right said, her tone laced with bitter sarcasm.
“My sentiments exactly.”
The tingling sensation moved up his thighs and was now starting in the tips of his fingers. Whatever they had shot him with was wearing off, and he was absolutely sure he was not about to give them a chance to shoot him with anything else. He needed the women to keep talking as they were, because it meant they weren’t paying him a bit of attention.
A door opened, and he almost looked to see who it was.
The woman started talking immediately. Her haughty tone filled the room and caused him to cringe and shrink away from the sound. If he could have crawled out of his skin and left it there, Donté was certain he would have without a second thought.