by Stone, Layla
She didn’t expect him to be cruel. Her defenses had been down because she was still nursing the wound from the lack of affection after not seeing her for three days. Beside her, Denny chuckled. “Sounds like the morning after a hot blitz. Sorry, sweetie, it’s just how Demons are.”
Nara was glad that Denny didn’t know anything. So, she responded so Shine wouldn’t hear her true anger, and Denny would continue coming to the wrong conclusion “Just so you know, pulling all-nighters isn’t sexy when you look as pale as a Yunkin in the morning.”
16
Wrong Again
Nara was still wound up over Shine when Denny said, “Okay, so it’s clear you two didn’t blitz. So, why are you so pissed?”
“None of your business. And how do you know we didn’t?”
Today, the Red Demon looked relaxed, which pissed her off for no reason. The male reclined and crossed his ankles. “At first, I thought you had blitzed given what Shine said. Figured he went all night and was telling you not to hurry back so he could recuperate and regain his energy. It was your response that cleared up the confusion. You were pissed. If you spent all night with a Demon blitzing, you wouldn’t be pissed.”
“Well, aren’t you clever?”
He shrugged. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” she said, looking at the navigation screen, checking to see how much longer she would be in the vehicle with the nosey Demon.
“Something happened. My guess, Shine said something that offended you. It was probably true, which is why you’re this pissed off.”
“Wrong. He said nothing to me the entire night.”
17
Purple Crush
Shine stood in the entryway, watching Nara leave, feeling the crushing weight of shame.
He had forgotten the cold shiver he’d felt the day his mother died. The sinking feeling of self-hatred and rage. Those two emotions mixed in his blood, and he wanted to take a vibrant to his heart to stop it from beating.
She’d looked hurt when he turned his back on her. He’d never thought to pain another person again.
Days ago, after he’d left Z, he’d ordered a tracking chip. When he opened the pod, there was a note.
Don’t think for a second to interfere with Nara. I will peel the skin off your face before I let you get in my way. Your job is to feed her and give her a place to sleep. That’s all. I will be watching.
Shine had let that stew for days, then ten minutes before Nara arrived, he’d gotten another hand-written note.
Ignore her tonight, or I will kill Z, his mate, and their new son.
Karr never bluffed. Shine had no choice but to find something to keep him busy or he would break, and his best friend and his new family would die.
It took every ounce of willpower to keep himself in check. And not to crawl into bed with Nara when she fell asleep.
His Minky pinged, alerting him to a pod outside his balcony.
He knew who’d sent it before he turned around. He walked into his bedroom and heard a poof, and then it felt like something was crawling in his hair.
Stepping back, he flipped his head over and slapped at the possible infestation. The crawling sensation shook his scalp. He frantically whipped his head back and forth.
The creeping stopped, and he was momentarily immobilized. Then he raced to the bathroom to look in the mirror.
Looking at his reflection, his lower lip dropped. The sensation wasn’t from bugs. It was Nara’s powder polymer.
Raising his hand, he touched it. It felt thick, and several strands of his hair were clumped together.
It was like waxy, purple dreadlocks. “You’re insane, Nara.” This is what she did when he ignored her? By all that was holy, she had temper issues.
If he took a picture and sent it out, everyone would think he was a male Sennite. The color was spot-on. He wondered if she’d picked it on purpose. Sending him a message that he was as worthless as a Sennite male.
Thinking about his agreement not to talk to her all night, he remembered the delivery. Leaving the bathroom, he opened the balcony and grabbed the pod, then opened it and saw the single piece of black paper with white ink inside.
Good job. Now, remember that if you interfere with my business again, I’ll interfere with your life, and I won’t be so nice next time.
Shine crumpled the paper in his hand and walked it to the incinerator. As he walked through the apartment, he looked for some residue of purple to see how Nara had done this to him.
Circling the apartment three times, he couldn’t find anything. That grated on his nerves because he didn’t like the feeling of inadequacy of falling prey to Nara’s little prank.
An hour later, he gave up the search and got into the shower. He found that the water ran off his purple hair as if it were waterproof. “You waterproofed my hair, you crazy female?” he said out loud.
No amount of soap or anything softened the thick, hard polymer strands of hair.
Out of the shower, he ordered paint thinner and waited impatiently for the delivery. When it arrived, he quickly took the large can out, opened the lid, and poured it into a cup.
Back in the bathroom, he dipped his head in the sink and poured the thinner over his head, trying to work it into his hair.
The liquid rolled off, making no impact.
Shine sat down on his toilet, knowing only one other option to get rid of the purple hair. But he really didn’t want to do it. From the cabinet adjacent to the shower, he pulled out a pair of sheers and turned them on, then held them at the front of his scalp and took a deep breath. He pushed the sheers through the strands and slowly shaved his head.
18
Tick-Tock, Princess
In the lab, halfway through another Flourg experiment reversal, Karr walked through the double doors. He clapped his hands and rounded to the other side of the medical bed, then grabbed it and got in her face. “I’ll be honest. I thought that once you got the hang of this, you’d keep improving. But you’re not. You’re just as slow and irritating as you were before. So, here’s my deal. Listen closely,” he said, right before he flicked her head.
Nara turned her face but didn’t swat the air because one hand was holding tweezers with a microscopic string. She couldn’t retaliate without breaking the filament and making it a hundred times harder to get a good hold because only the ends were thick enough to pinch.
Karr continued. “You get one person done a day, starting today, and I won’t lose my temper.” His head turned back and forth, and then he added, “Actually, I already lost my temper today. Speed it up, or I’ll burn you alive and bring in a butcher to flay their skin off and let the medscopes heal them.”
“If you snap the string, it breaks into little bits. Your butcher would still have to spend time cutting away the flesh in a way that didn’t break up the illumination string.”
“Boring!” Karr yelled in her ear. “Just get it done. It has to be done.”
She nodded at him, knowing that he was more spun-up than usual. It didn’t take a Numan to realize that now was not the time to talk back.
Karr stayed as she removed the line of string. When she let it heal, she started again. She felt his fingers flick the back of her head. “Tick-tock, princess.”
She ignored him as she worked. He stayed for almost an hour, commenting on how slow she was, but she couldn’t go any faster. It was impossible to rush. It was like someone had drenched the string in an illumination compound and let it crystalize there. It was delicate and time-consuming to remove it.
Hours later, Nara was healing a second part of the body when the doors opened, and Karr walked in with a blowtorch, scorching a long, blue flame.
Clamoring back, she held up her hand. “What are you doing?”
“I wasn’t joking. I told you, I need this to get done.” Karr turned up the flame and said, “You can make this easy on yourself, or you can make this extra painful. The quickest way to get this over with is to turn around and pul
l off your shirt. I’ll burn your back. The extra painful way is to make me do it, wherein I will destroy everything from the waist up, including your hair.”
Nara could not imagine being burned like that. The skin would cook and curl, and the muscles underneath would be destroyed. The water in the skin would steam and sizzle from the inside out.
Nara’s hands shook as she lifted them up. “Wait, wait. It will take even longer to get what you need done if you burn me.”
Karr pulled out a small medscope from his pocket. He held it between his thumb and index finger. “It won’t be permanent, just long enough to make my point.”
“You’ve made your point! Holy hell. Just walking in here with that thing scared the stars out of me.”
Karr rounded the medical bed. “No excuses, Numan. Make your choice. Pain for a little bit or a prolonged amount of time.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.” Nara couldn’t breathe. Her stomach bubbled with dread. Her mind filled with images. Flashes of what she’d seen growing up in her mother’s lab. Black flesh. Cut-open bodies. Blood dripping on the floor.
The pills in her stomach weren’t doing anything to stop the building vomit from coming up her throat.
“Wrong answer. Looks like I will have to make the choice for you.”
* * *
Karr had burned a single line on her left arm before he backed up, not wanting to be sprayed with her projectile vomit. She had lost her mind, her stomach, and was heaving deeply. Anytime Karr moved to her again, she threw up. At this point, she was vomiting blood.
Her hands and knees were both soaked in her liquids, and it made her stomach twist more, but she tried to keep it in for when Karr moved towards her. She didn’t know how long she could keep this up, but her skin depended on it.
Karr twisted the back of the bottle, and the flame winked out. “You got my message.” He reached into his pocket and then tossed the small silver medscope into the reddish-yellow liquid. “Clean yourself and this mess up and get back to work. According to my watch, the new day started, and you have another person being brought in. You have exactly twenty-four hours to complete both. Otherwise…” He shook the bottle of butane.
Nara watched Karr leave, worried that he was lying and would rush back to her. As he walked out, Denny escorted in another female with illuminated skin. He saw Nara and the floor and said, “I thought you’d be worse.”
She felt her body heat thinking of how Denny didn’t come to her rescue. “It’s about to get worse.” Because if she couldn’t finish these two bodies, which she didn’t think she could, it would definitely end badly. Karr had proven that he didn’t bluff.
Pushing up from her soaked knees, she stood, grabbed the medscope, healed herself then walked over to the sink and began removing her clothes.
“Don’t mind us, sweetheart. Just keep doing whatever you’re doing,” Denny said, but it didn’t sound sexual, it almost seemed like he was being sympathetic.
Once the vomit-soaked clothes were off, Nara took the soap and lathered up every part of her. She rinsed and dried herself with sanitized towels. Finding more tummy-temper pills, she popped another two and pulled out some All-Away cleaner to let the liquid become thousands of little solid balls. Then she swept it all up and sanitized the floor. After that, she washed her clothes, hung them up to dry, pulled on a white lab coat, and walked to the medical bed.
Denny was still standing there, watching her. The other Flourg was on the opposite bed along the wall, staring up at the ceiling.
“You good?” Denny asked.
“Get out, Denny. I need to think,” she said, looking over the half-finished body and wondering how she could get the job done. All this time, she had been looking at it like a Veeda experiment. Trying to reverse-engineer Veeda’s steps. But no more.
She needed to find a solution her way.
To her right rested a silver bowl with several strings of illumination. Picking it up, she had a thought. If Karr was simply trying to cover up their skin, all she had to do was use the powder polymer on them. It could be done in minutes. Especially if she used the right color and had the polymer attach itself to the illumination.
19
Dark Abyss
Shine stood in his lab, safety glasses on as he dripped the polymer experiment into the fourth beaker of solution.
The yellow chemical dropped, and the beaker instantly exploded.
It happened so fast that he didn’t have time to move. His glasses cracked, and his face felt numb for a minute before it all started to sting. Another explosion happened, this time from the floor. He tried to look down, but all he saw was a black spot and four different sections of the fire-retardant tile. Then he saw a small pool of purple. It took his mind several seconds to recognize the color and figure out what it was.
His blood.
His mind was in a fog. He tried to look at his hand, but he couldn’t move. Watching his own demise, his life force rushing from him, Shine knew he didn’t have time to think. He had to act. Pushing his legs with all the mental acuity he had, he moved towards the Minky.
He stumbled and landed on several shards of glass. His body became enflamed in pain. He screamed. A cold knowing entered his mind. If he didn’t move, he was going to die.
Shaking his mind and his pained body, he inched up and crawled on the floor. It was taking too long, and he worried about dying until he saw the long bottle of cinder oil.
It was under the Minky screen. If he could get a drink, he would at least have a fighting chance. Inch by inch, he got closer to the prize. His vision was fading in and out, and his limbs shook violently. Taking a deep breath, he hissed. “Don’t stop.”
Another few feet and he was there. He swallowed a large gulp of the oil and poured the rest on himself, hoping it worked topically, too. His skin burned, and he shook. He wasn’t sure if it was helping or not. His white jacket was soaked and dark purple.
Shine looked up at the Minky screen and knew he had to get himself up onto the counter to use it. Hooking his hand on the lip of the counter he pulled. His wet hand slipped, and he crashed back down, landing on the glass that was already embedded.
Shine screamed again. This time, he didn’t hold back how much it hurt.
Several breaths later, he forced his knees under him and sat up. He used his arm to cover the lip of the counter and pulled. His feet were not steady, but he wasn’t dead weight. Touching the screen, he pulled up Z’s number and called out.
It rang and rang and rang. No answer.
“Answer the phone. Sweet Seth, don’t do this to me,” Shine prayed and called again.
No answer. Then Shine’s world went black, and he didn’t have to feel the pain of landing on the shards of glass again. Or slowly dying.
20
Lab Safety
Nara and Denny had been waiting for Shine to buzz them up for the past five minutes. He wasn’t answering the alert. Nara turned to the Red Demon. “Fly up to the balcony and see if he’s home.”
Denny turned around and headed back out the double doors. Nara followed, buzzing with urgency. She needed supplies and to use Shine’s lab.
Inside the Grummer, they ascended to the balcony. Nara looked through the glass bedroom door and didn’t see Shine in there or the Minky screen on. “He’s not home,” she announced.
“Then he’s probably at his lab,” Denny said.
Nara whipped around. “Can you take me there?”
Denny gave her a pointed look. “You’re not going to do anything stupid, are you? If you try to take off the cuff, I promise Karr will order me to find and kill you.” She wondered if Denny was telling her this because he didn’t want to do that.
“I just want to see Shine’s lab. Heard he makes cool pistols there,” she lied. She was so nervous, her foot bounced.
Denny leaned forward. “Excited to see your Night Demon?”
“Yep.” Because he was the means to an end.
“Hopefully, he’s just as
excited to see you.”
Arrogantly, she replied, “He will be. Because I’ve got a surprise for him that I know he’s going to like.”
“And what’s that?”
“I’m going to blow his mind.” Because really, who didn’t like seeing a Numan female in a lab?
The Grummer stopped at a warehouse. Denny was the first to get out, and she followed. When they came up to the door, they found it locked. The Red Demon pounded his big fist against the metal, and they waited.
Nara didn’t have time to wait. She would give Shine another minute, and then she would find a way in.
“I need to see your Minky pad. I need to order a door opener,” she said, holding out her palm.
Denny pulled out a long, black card. “You mean this?”
It didn’t look like a door opener, but there were several models. “Exactly.” She watched as Denny slipped the card into the crack between the door and the building’s wall. It started sparking, and Nara closed her eyes, realizing it was a micro-welder.
Denny hissed. She opened her eyes and saw him shaking his hand. He’d burned himself. Tickled, she said, “Welding is still dangerous. Safety is never a thing of the past.”
Denny ignored her as he pulled open the door. Nara slipped under his arm and dashed through the opening, scanning as she went. The entryway was empty except for a static plate. The first part of the warehouse was large and open, seven different conveyor belts and a large fabricator situated at the far back.
Moving past the long conveyor tables, she saw a hallway and walked faster. “Shine,” she called out, knowing that it was a good idea to announce herself. The door to the first room slid open, and she stopped. Her brain and stomach paused when she saw the damage on the floor, and the big pool of purple Demon blood under Shine’s slumped form.
