Balance Point

by Katherine Rhodes

  John walked over to the bar where a lone bartender was wiping the counter. I knew right away it was one of the Intra agents.

  John, that's the agent. Talk to him.

  A little surprised to hear my voice in his head, John recovered nicely and sat down to talk to him. I couldn't hear what was being said, but I could sense his reaction to it. The agent pulled something out of his pocket and slid it over to John.

  As soon as John touched it, his whole body jerked, and the feeling rolled through me a moment later. He had managed to save the napkin she'd been using. I marched over and grabbed it, the whole scene plowing into my brain right up to when she chugged the drink, and the bartender moved the napkin away.

  I stared at the man behind the counter. “Who are you?”

  He glanced around. “Agent Oplau Kigarn, Climantra. I've been trying to break this ring since day one. I finally got them to trust me. I'm sorry it was her.”

  I smiled. “I'm not.”

  “Our little demon is quite the ass kicker.” John's voice was laced with pride, and I completely agreed.

  Kigarn looked at John. “Can you track her without the biological?”

  “Yes, but it will be easier when it kicks in.”

  Holding out a bag, he offered it to us. “Here. This is the scent. She's probably about twenty minutes out from having it kick in. In all likelihood, they took her to the tunnels.”

  I nodded. “We figured that. We were cleared to pursue, and call for back up if needed.”

  With a giant sigh of relief, Kigarn slumped on the counter. “Finally. They took me seriously. Their idyllic paradise is ripe for plucking for the scum of the galaxy. I hope they clear the special forces now.”

  John put a hand on my shoulder. “Let's go get her back, so she can help break up the ring.”

  That sounded like the best course of action. I wanted to scream and yell at the officials who had let this happen, but Auralym was missing, and we had to get her back.

  John led the way, confidence in his stride as he led me down the walkway. There were few people around, and I realized how late it was. But the fewer people, the easier to follow her trail.

  And John had no trouble with that. Even I could feel her through him. She was a powerful presence, our connection notwithstanding. There was more to this little demon than even she knew.

  About two hundred strides from the club, the vampire halted. He looked around, then glanced at me. “This is where she was knocked out after she screamed for us.”

  “Harder to follow her while she's unconscious?”

  “Only a bit. I have the scent of one of her escorts.”

  “Let's go.”

  “Do you have a weapon?”

  I sighed. “I don't like to brag but… being a confluence, there's not much that can touch me. Including the sigif that most of the Intra carry.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “You're as powerful as that?”

  “Insanely powerful. It's why I'm so valuable to the psychic community. It's why they want me back and want me to just make babies for them. I'm rare, very rare.”

  “Well, I'm glad you got the hell away from that.” He glanced ahead of us and nodded. “Let's go. You know where this is heading.”

  “The tunnels, of course.”

  John took off at a sharp pace, down the hall with the scent of one of our little demon's captors in his nose. I had never seen him use this much of his vampire. He usually just let his teeth out, and drinks then tucked all of his vampire away. I had to remember that he had been, at one time, just a plain psychic Meta. His hiding away the vampire part of him was probably from then on—there were stories about how much there were races in the Meta worlds that were feared for no good reason. Vampires were at the top, and they were, for the most part, not dangerous at all.

  Now, though, watching John using the vampire, I could see why a younger species might fear him. He radiated power, and the strength of his blood was a hell of a turn on. This wasn't the time to explore that idea, so I tucked it away. He kept his pace as we wound through the main city down and out into the Arid dome, one of the domes leading down into the dark levels.

  Just when I thought he was going down another level, he made a hard left and went into one of the housing corridors that was unoccupied.

  The door he stopped at was about half way down, and according to the commpad scan I quickly tapped through, there was no one living in it. I swiped the door open when John growled at it wordlessly.

  The door opened to a stripped apartment and a makeshift staircase in the center.

  “That’s why we can't find them. They don't use the doors that were built in. They build their own.”

  John grunted, and headed for the stairs. “Be ready for anything. I don't know what's down there. But the biological trace has kicked in. I can smell it and her fear.”

  I didn't much like the last in his list, but I pulled up my own powers, following him down the stairs.

  Chapter Eight

  Auralym

  I rose through the haze of my unconsciousness, and I hated the fog that was still there.

  Eva and I had been through hell after our parents had died. We had been abused by family members, sexually used by others, and were on the run most of the time. We found ourselves in this consuming fog of unconsciousness too often—and it was one of the worst feelings in the universe.

  It was impossible to know where you were, or who was there with you. There could be a gun in your back; there could be angry animals waiting for you to die. There was a chance you were naked, there was a chane you could be smothered by a blanket.

  It was that unknown that scared me the most. I didn't know what I was going to have to handle when I opened my eyes.

  But as I always did, I opened them and tried to look around.

  There was only dark.

  Damn.

  I moved my wrists. They were wrapped tightly together. I moved a leg. Those weren't bound. I pushed my leg out. I was wearing pants. I pulled my hands in. I found my shirt was still there. I made a catalogue of my body parts. Everything was there. Everything was also in working order. I could tell I was on my side against a wall by the pressure on my shoulder, back and hip.

  So, it was dark, my arms were bound, and I was still fully dressed, probably dropped in a corner.

  Not the worst situation I could be in.

  The bindings around my arms were very tight. There was no way I could wiggle out of those. Moving carefully, I pushed away from the wall and maneuvered myself into a sitting position. Well, that was one thing for me—I was able to move around. Sitting up, I could see there was a light to my right. It looked like the light would leak under a doorway.

  Suddenly, the stink hit me. It was a nasty little smell. Not overpowering, but the kind that would waft by and make someone wrinkle their nose, wondering who had just passed gas. It came in small waves as I moved, and I realized it was me. It was the trace the bartender had given me, seeping out of my pores. But this wasn't a simple sulfur gas smell. This was more a pungent ammonia.

  Auralym.

  It was Marin's voice, floating through my mind. I smiled into the dark. He was looking for me, making his way through the tunnels. Marindor, did you hear me?

  We both heard you.

  John. John was with him. They were both coming after me. Their powers were blending a very interesting pattern, and I wondered when I had started being able to sense powers like that. And then I started wondering why they were like that because I had never mentioned one to the other during all of our trysts.

  It's a long story, little demon, but we're on our way. John's sweet tenor was laced with something new—not the blood lust I was used to, that was for sure. It was an anger of sorts, a desire to see blood spilled.

  Over me?

  Of course over you, demonling. Marin was amused at me. Hell, I was starting to find myself funny with the utter naiveté. We are both worried about you. It was brave to drink the trace, and go a
long. You're going to save a lot of lives.

  I just hope you can save mine.

  There was another waft of amusement through my mind, but no answers. I held tight. I didn't know how long they were going to be. Or if I'd be alive when they got to me.

  The door to the right, the one I suspected when I saw the crack, creaked open and let the light in, blinding me. But there was no mistaking the person who stood in the door. I tried to say Eldeban's name, but my lips were dry and cracked, and my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.

  “Oh, don’t worry, Aura. I know you know me. And I know you know what's going on now. We have an auction for you next week. There are quite a few buyers lined up, too.” He squatted in front of me. “We also have a test drive policy here on Lorn. You don't have to buy if you don't like the way it rides. So you're going to get all cleaned up, and lay on the bed like a good little slave and we're going to let your buyers take you for a test spin.”

  Grabbing my arm, Eldeban yanked me to my feet in one giant heave of his body. “Bath time, bitch.”

  “How can you?” The words barely made it out of me.

  “How can I what? Sell off you bitch succubi? It's really not hard. A little loose morals, a little anger, a little jealousy, and a whole fucking ton of cash.” He leaned in. “I really don't care to do this, but the money is fantastic and really, when the money is fantastic, what's a little illegal activity.”

  “This isn't a little.”

  “Eh. Little, big. In the end, it's all in the same bank account.”

  There was no resisting him as he dragged me through the door and down the hall to a bathroom. It wasn't much of a bathroom. There was a tub of water and some towels, and a bar of soap. No one used that soap anymore. No one—it was lye, and it hurt Meta and Human skin alike. A woman with a cruel face appeared from another door and smirked at me.

  “Strip her, Elde. You know I won't do that.”

  Eldeban grabbed something off the wall behind me and just flat out cut my clothes down the back. He sliced down the arms, and the whole thing fell to the ground. I curbed my shame at being naked. That was not an emotion for right now. I had to just act like I didn't care, even though they had told me I was there to be cleaned to be raped. Repeatedly.

  Not the first time I'd heard that either.

  The woman with the cruel face walked around me once and palmed various parts of my body: ass, breasts and a good cop of the old pussy. She seemed to linger there a bit longer than was polite for an assessment for a sex slave.

  “Mirda! Hands off!” Eldeban finally snapped at her. “Wash her, don't finger fuck her. You're not the paying customer. You'll get a cut as long you're not feeling up the goods.”

  “She's a lush one.”

  “Mirda!”

  The cruel looking woman grabbed my wrists, pulling me over to the tub that was sitting there. She cocked her head, then shoved me into the water.

  It was shockingly, breathtakingly, icy cold. It stole my air, and then I started hyperventilating, pulling in a solid lungful of the water—and realizing they never changed the water between washings. I sucked in some other poor woman's filth and shame.

  I knew this was going to get worse. Much worse.

  The lye soap was scrubbed on to my skin almost before I could catch my breath. And she didn't miss a spot. There was one she kept going over, too, but lye soap wasn't good for the clitoris, and she didn't seem to know that or care in the least.

  I was yanked out and dried, again, vigorous and copious attention paid to my sex. The whole time my wrists were tied together, and there wasn't a chance that I could stave off her attack. I was finally draped in a robe that kind of covered me, and Eldeban took possession of me again.

  Dragged down the hall, I was thrown on the bed in a dark room, and I could tell that like everything else down here, was filthy. The sheets were crunchy with the remainders of sex.

  I almost threw up.

  I sat up on the end of the bed, in the dim light of the disgusting room. I could make out the shine of a window screen, and I saw the glint of camera lens above the bed. So they not only raped you in the room, but they filmed it and allowed people to watch.

  I started shaking like a leaf on a tree. How distant that leaf, that tree, that forest, that world seemed now. I sat in a dark room, waiting to be raped, and the reality finally hit me. If Marin and John couldn't get here, or find me in time, this was my life. This was my eternity. Nothing but a rape toy for the highest bidder.

  The door creaked open, and someone walked in behind me.

  I braced myself.

  I wasn't going down easy.

  * * *

  John

  I could feel her fear and a heartbeat later, I could hear her screams.

  Marin and I traded only a quick glance before taking off like a pair of Famiil bats out of a raging fire.

  Auralym's scream echoed in the hall and raised the hair on the nape of my neck. They weren't going to do this to her. I wasn't going to let them take her away from me. Not when I finally found someone I could love again.

  Eldeban stepped out from a corner I didn't see and plowed into me, taking me back into Marin. My leg shot up and kicked him in his balls, lifting him up off the ground and vaulting him over our heads into the rock wall.

  I heard the crunch of his head against the stone and hoped he was dead.

  I kept my motion going, and flipped completely around to land back on my feet. Marin managed to tuck and roll away from me. He scrambled to his feet as we saw another half dozen men appear around the corner, blocking our way to where Aura's screams were coming from.

  “You think that you two can stop this?”

  “We're here for Aura,” Marin answered. “The troops to shut you down are still behind us. They'll be here soon enough.”

  He was an excellent liar, and I wanted to make him not a liar. But there was no commpad, and there was no way to reach the Intra. We were on our own until we could get to them.

  “You know she's not going stay here.” The one slaver smirked at us. “There's no way you can stop this. We've brought in the highest bidders from all six of Seldova's worlds, and they are all going to take that pretty little thing out for a ride. She'll be sold off to someone completely different after all that. Bait and switch is such a wonderful thing.”

  Marin looked at me. “I know you're holding back, John. Let it out. Take them down. Not just for her, but for all the women they have stolen and destroyed.”

  It was a switch. Those were the words that somewhere, I had been waiting for for my whole long vampiric life. As much as I wanted all these pieces of shits to stand trial for what they had done, there was literally no stopping me at this point.

  My fangs dropped, and I could feel a new kind of blood lust—a killing lust to spill their blood useless on the ground around us. My eyes lit with the frightening red light I had striven my whole life to keep down. Claws. I had forgotten about the claws—they grew from what had been my fingernails and itched to sink into flesh.

  I didn't deny them very long. In two strides, I reached the first of the slavers. The one who had smirked at us was first, and I slashed just once, catching his heart in his chest and pulling it free. I held it up for him to see and squeezed it as he watched me destroy his life. I threw the crushed organ at his feet as he fell to his knees. I snarled, grabbing him by his neck and tore his throat free, drinking in as much of his blood as I could. And once I had just a good mouthful or two, I let him fall to the ground, his blood flowing from his twitching body.

  Two of the other slavers just ran. They screamed as they were running, but it was clear they had never seen a vampire in full rage. I quickly dispatched another, ripping his head off and enjoyed the blood from his neck like it was a water fountain. Again, just a few mouthfuls as I knew his still-living head could see me do it, and then tossed him the ground like a rag doll.

  Another came at me with some sharp object. I grabbed it—it was cast iron. I snappe
d it in half and drove the two pieces into his sides, piercing each lung. One I pulled out and one I pushed all the way in to spear his heart. He coughed, and his mouth filled with blood. I leaned in and kissed him, my tongue invading his mouth and sucking out the blood as it pooled.

  As I literally kissed him to death, the last standing slaver came at me. I swung the cast iron rod and nailed the sharp end of it right into his temple. He dropped to the ground dead, instantly.

  The body in my arms had nearly stopped struggling, so I tossed him away to land on the now-dead body of the last slaver.

  Marin had a hand over his mouth, and his eyes were wide as he assessed what I had just done. He shrugged a moment later. “Remind me not to piss you off. “

  I growled. “Auralym.”

  Marin nodded and ran down the hall where her screams were still echoing, and when I reached the door, I ripped it off the hinges.

  The troll inside had her throat in his hand, crushing her wind pipe, but she was still screaming. She had cuts and bruises and it looked like her leg was broken, but she was clawing at his eyes with her fingernails, trying to blind him, trying to push him away, even with her hands bound.

  There was so much fight in this beautiful demon.

  “Drop her.” Marin barked at him, holding me back.

  “She's mine. I bought the right to try the merchandise.”

  “She's not yours. She's not anyone's. Drop her.” Marin raised his hand, and the troll started coughing. “If you don't listen, you don't leave alive.”

  He choked on the words he wanted to speak but finally forced them out. “I bought the rights…”

  “You don't buy people, asshole.”

  He was choking the troll. I was impressed.

  “She's not people. It's just a woman. What do you care.”

  “She is our mate, and she's not just a woman. She's a Meta. She has as many rights as anyone else.”