Lover Mine

Lash threw the whore into the bathroom with all the care and concern he’d show toward a cheap duffel bag full of dirty laundry. As she landed hard in the tub and moaned against the duct tape over her mouth, he went back out to the car.

Unpacking took about twenty minutes and he put the shit in the basement on the concrete floor: seven sawed-off shotguns. A Hannaford plastic shopping bag full of cash. Three pounds of C4 plastic explosives. Two remote detonators. A hand grenade. Four auto loaders. Ammo. Ammo. Ammo.

As he came up the stairs and shut off the cellar light, he went to the back door, opened it, and put his hand out. The cool air of the night infiltrated the shield just fine, but his palm sensed the restriction. It was strong... but needed to be stronger.

Hellllllllllllo, ’hood rat.

Lash shut the door, dead-bolted it, and stalked to the bathroom.

He was all business as he took out his knife, sliced the bindings that held her wrists behind her back and—

She flailed around until he punched her in the head, knocking her out cold. Slice. Slice. Slice. He made three deep cuts in her wrists and in her neck and then sat back to watch the blood drain out of her in a sluggish ooze.

“Come on... bleed, bitch, bleed.”

As he checked his watch, he thought maybe he should have kept her compos mentis, because that would have ensured a higher pulse rate and blood pressure. And shortened this do-nothing wait while she drained out.

Watching the process, he had no idea how dry she had to be, but the red pool beneath her was rising, her pink basque staining dark.

His foot was going a mile a minute as time droned on... and then he noticed that her skin was not just pale but gray and the blood wasn’t really getting any higher on the walls of the tub. Calling it done, he cut open her basque, exposing a truly awful set of implants, and stabbed open her chest, the blade of his knife going right through her sternum.

The next cut he made was in his own flesh.

Holding his wrist over the gaping hole he’d made, he watched black drops free-fall into her motionless heart. Again, he wasn’t sure how much he should be giving her, and tried to err on the side of overdoing it. Then it was a case of summoning energy into his palm, his will forcing air molecules to start spinning in a tornadic circle until they became a unit of kinetic power that he could control.

Lash looked down at the whore, her body all defiled, her makeup smudged on her cheeks, her ratty hair more fright wig than anything you’d expect to see on the street.

He needed this to work. Already, with nothing more than the barrier spell in place and this little fireball in his hand, he could feel his strength ebbing.

This had to fucking work.

He cast the blast into her chest cavity and her dead limbs flopped like fish tails against the sides of the tub. As the flash of light lit off and then dispersed, he waited... praying to—

The gasp she let out was god-awful. And also a godsend.

He was fascinated as her heart began to pump and his black blood was absorbed into the raw meat of her rib cage, the reanimation causing his cock to twitch in excitement. This was power, he thought. Fuck the shit money could buy.

He really was a god, just like his father.

Lash sat on his heels and watched the color return to her skin. As life came back to her, her hands curled against the edge of the tub and the withered muscles of her thighs twitched.

The next step was something he didn’t fully understand but wasn’t going to question. When she looked as if she was firmly back on the side of the living, he reached in with his bare hand and ripped that heart of hers right out of her chest.

More gasping. More choking. Blah, blah, blah.

He was fascinated with what he’d accomplished, especially as he put his palm over her sternum and commanded her flesh to reknit itself: What do you know, her very skin and bone followed his will and she was once more as she had been.

Except better. Because she was useful to him now.

He reached to the side and cranked on the shower, the spray hitting her body and face, her eyes blinking against the cold rain, her hands batting at it pitifully.

How long did he wait now? he wondered. How long until he could see if he was one step closer to what was really going to sustain him?

As a wave of exhaustion crept up his spine and fogged out his brain, he slumped against the cupboards that ran under the sink. Kicking the door shut, he balanced his forearms on his knees and played witness to the whore flailing around.

So weak.

So fucking weak.

It should have been his Xhex. He should have done this to her and not some random, skank-ass human.

Putting his hands to his face, he hung his head as his elation washed out of him. This was not how it was supposed to be. This was not what he’d planned.

On the run. Hunted. Scrambling in the world.

What the hell was he going to do without his father.

TWENTY-EIGHT

While John waited for Xhex to respond to his question, he focused on the words he’d written, tracing them with his pen, darkening them as he passed over them again.

He probably shouldn’t be making demands given the shape she was in, but he needed something back from her. If he was going to expose his blanket chest of not-so-hot, he couldn’t be the only one getting that kind of naked.

He also really wanted to know what was doing with her, and she was the only one who was going to tell him.

As the silence droned on, all he could think of was... shit, she was shutting the door on him. Again. On one level it so wasn’t a surprise and therefore shouldn’t have mattered. God knew he’d been on the receiving end of her rejections plenty of times.

The reality was that it felt like another death for him to face—

“I saw you. Yesterday.”

Her voice yanked his head up. What? he mouthed.

“He kept me in that bedroom. I saw you. You came in and went to the bed. You left with a pillow. I was... beside you the whole time you were there.”

John’s hand lifted to his cheek and she smiled a little. “Yes, I touched your face.”

Jesus Christ...

How, he mouthed.

“I’m not sure precisely how he does it. But that was the way he got me in the first place. We were all in that cave where Rehv was being kept in the colony. The symphaths had come in and Lash got me—it happened so damned fast. I was suddenly off my feet, being dragged out, but I couldn’t fight and no one could hear me scream. It’s like a force field. If you’re inside, and you try to breach it, the shock is painful and quick—but it’s more than aversion. There’s a physicality to the barrier.” She lifted her palm and pushed at the air. “A weave. The strange thing is, though, you can have other people in the same space. Like when you came in.”

John was dimly aware that his hands hurt for some reason. Glancing down, he saw that he’d cranked them into fists and the pad was digging into his flesh. So was the Bic he’d been writing with.