Shadows and Stars

by Becca Fanning

  Vincent’s companion started to stand but sat back down in a hurry when Penny rounded on him. “Some friend you are. It’s like you don’t know Vincent at all. Here.” She let go of Vincent’s ear to grab her purse. “Pay his bill with these and scuttle back home like the cockroach you are.” She threw two tokens on the table and strong-armed Vincent from the bar.

  “Oh my God, oh my God.” She kept up the mantra down every corridor. “Oh my God.” She drew him to a halt and grasped his chin in her hand. “What were you thinking? Were you thinking? Well, don’t expect me to hold your hair when your body rejects all that blood.”

  Vincent raked his hand through his hair and opened his mouth as if to reply.

  “No.” Penny held her hand in his face. “Don’t you dare say a word. I can’t listen to you right now. Oh my God.” Ignoring his wince, she dragged him off again.

  Finally, they arrived in front of his room, and she surveyed the fingerprint lock. She held out her hand. “Thumb?”

  He stepped back and shoved his hands deep into his pockets.

  “For God’s sake, man. This isn’t a poorly thought out game of find the sausage.” She thrust a hand after his right one, and he yelped, the first sound he’d made since she accosted him at the bar.

  A series of beeps and a lock clicking open startled her, and she turned in time to watch the door sliding open. She stepped away as a familiar pale face peered out at her.

  “Oh my God.” She looked at Vincent, then back at the person in his room. “Vincent?” She looked at both men again.

  “Penny? What the…? Get in here.” Vincent-in-the-room grabbed her arm and yanked her through the doorway. “You, too.” He gave a curt nod at the Vincent Penny had dragged home from the bar.

  After closing and locking the door, then checking the lock and dimming the lights, Room-Vincent gestured Penny and Bar-Vincent further inside. No sooner had they sat down when Bar-Vincent opened his mouth.

  “It wasn’t my fault!” His foreign mixture of toddler whine and teenage surliness sent a flash of irritation through Penny, and she shuffled away from him, her clothes shushing over the fabric on Vincent’s bed. Of all the times to be sat on Vincent’s bed…with a man apparently not Vincent.

  “Who are you?” He couldn’t possibly exist. “We came aboard two-by-two, Vincent, or had you forgotten? It’s the whole point and purpose behind setting up the brand-new world.” She widened her eyes at the man she hadn’t found drinking blood.

  “Blah, blah, blah…all hail the new age Noah. Gerald has you truly brainwashed.”

  When Blood-Vincent dared speak even though she hadn’t addressed him, magic flared through her, and she sneezed violently three times. Room-Vincent appeared in front of her with a tissue, and she concentrated her excess energy into an icy glare for his double.

  “You. Should. Not. Be. Here.” She spoke slowly as though addressing a small child and waved her arms in case big gestures further aided his comprehension. “Vincent could get into real trouble.”

  He didn’t respond.

  She sighed. “Look, do I need to show you with flashcards?” When he remained silent, again, she appealed to Room-Vincent, who seemed to be the real deal. “Okay, is there something happening on board that I don’t know about? Did Gerald get sick of waiting for people to pair up? Have you got—” Horror filled her, and she released her final words on a stage whisper. “—a clone?”

  Bar-Clone-Vincent snorted and stood up before ambling to the nearest wall and propping it up with his shoulder.

  “What?” She looked between the two men, noting their likenesses, noticing differences. “Wait…you aren’t clones.” She stabbed her finger at each in turn. You’re—”

  “I’m his—”

  “He’s my brother.” Vincent came to kneel at her feet, taking her hands between his. “Please understand.”

  “You’ve just been…hiding him?” Hurt softened her pitch to a whisper. “Even from me?”

  Vincent flashed a wry smile, although it was a pale shadow of his usual self-assured expression.

  She stood, the movement abrupt, and pushed against Vincent’s chest. But he remained, as immovable as a black hole, and she walked around him to find some free space in which to lose her temper. Or her mind. Whichever came first.

  Magic welled up in her again, and she scratched her arms, each movement raking a furious red line across her skin.

  “Penny.”

  Even Vincent’s soothing voice grated on her nerves, and she scratched harder, willing the itch away.

  “What’s she doing?” Fear quavered in Other-Vincent’s voice, and she forced back a grin at his sudden discomfort.

  “Shut up, will you? She’s got an allergy. You’ve made this happen. What were you even thinking? We always said Penny must never see you.”

  “Oh. I thought it was that we must never be in the same place at the same time or we’d break the space-time continuum or something.” Vincent’s brother sounded almost bored as he replied.

  “For God’s sake! This is a spaceship, not a TARDIS.” Vincent spat the words at him, and a malicious smile crept up his face as he watched his brother recoil. “That’s right, brother. Only the strongest among us can withstand and use His name.”

  “Stop it, both of you.” Penny’s magic receded as she studied them. “How the hell do you two even share a space without going nuclear? Let’s just calm down and try to work this out.”

  “Work it out? It was working. I’m going back to Derek. He’ll be wondering about me.” Vincent’s brother marched towards the door.

  “Stop right there.”

  “Make me, little brother.”

  “Fine.” Vincent turned away.

  His brother touched the keypad.

  Vincent reached for his communication device. “I’m the one officially on the passenger list, Victor. One word out of me to Geraldine, Gerald, Hazel, or any of the cadets, and you’ll be jettisoned.”

  “You’d both be jettisoned, you stupid man.” Penny’s words tumbled out. “You think Gerald would forgive you for taking him for a fool like this?” Could she even forgive him? She’d had no idea what her best friend was hiding. She could have passed Vincent in a corridor and not known he was…Victor. Maybe she’d even spoken to him and not realised. The idea churned her stomach. She focused on Victor. “Have we met?”

  “You mean like been introduced?” He stuck out his hand. “Pleased to meet you. I’m Vincent.”

  Vincent emitted a low hiss.

  “At least, on this ship I am. He calls me Victor, though.” Victor gave a quick nod of his head in Vincent’s direction.

  “And have we met?” The nausea hadn’t released its grip on Penny, but she asked again. Weariness overcame her, and she sat down, her back against the wall. She didn’t know her best friend at all if he was two people.

  A giggle almost escaped as she remembered that, for a mere moment, she’d thought she might feel more than friendship for him. Even the trouble that would bring paled against the idea of the matching pair in Vincent’s room. Two. Not two by two.

  Two.

  Of them.

  She rubbed her fingertips over her forehead and down the sides of her face, pulling the skin around her eyes until she imagined she was morphing into a basset hound.

  Victor rolled his eyes. “No.”

  “Are you sure?” She turned her hope of a truthful answer on Vincent. Surely he could still be relied on not to lie to her face.

  “You’ve only ever spent time with me. I promise.” He sank down next to her and pulled her into an awkward hug.

  She didn’t relax.

  “Aww…trouble in paradise?” From his position by the door, Victor sneered down at them and his mouth twisted in a way that made Vincent’s beautiful face ugly.

  “Go to bed, Victor. I’ll take Penny back to her room.”

  “I bet you will.”

  “Just leave it.” Vincent stood and offered a hand to Penny. “Come on. We c
an talk somewhere more private.”

  NINE

  “TALK TO ME, THEN.” A quiet note of pleading Penny had never heard before threaded through Vincent’s words.

  She shrugged. “I only have questions. Too many questions.”

  “And I have all of the answers you want. Ask me anything.”

  “Like what? Really? Why you’ve lied to me all this time? How you managed to keep such a big secret? Why you even wanted to? I thought I knew you. I thought I…” She bit down on finishing her sentence and turned away, her shoulders tense.

  “You do know me. I’m still the man I’ve always been. The man I want to be, not a monster. Your Vincent. Your man if you want me. The man who lo—”

  “Don’t.” She found herself in front of him, looking him straight in the eye. “Don’t you dare say one more word. If there are any more things I shouldn’t know in your head today, I don’t want to hear them unless I take it upon myself to beat them out of you. Got that?” She could see every fleck of gold in his deep brown eyes, each dilation of his pupil. If she leant just a fraction of a millimetre further towards him, maybe she’d fall in and drown. “Hey.” She grasped the last remnants of her self-control and drew back. “Are you using that mind control on me?”

  “No!” The reply burst from him. “What? Why would I? Never.”

  “Okay.” Unsure whether to believe him, she perched on the furthest corner of her bed. “Go on then, tell me about Victor.”

  “He’s my brother.”

  “Really?” She clutched her chest in mock surprise. “Your brother by a different mother, perhaps?”

  Vincent blinked his eyes rapidly, then tilted his head to one side and pursed his lips. “No, same mum.” He spoke slowly, and his Adam’s apple bobbed before his next words. “My…twin. He’s older by about twenty minutes.”

  Finally. Some truth. “Right, and what is he doing here?”

  “He needed to be here. We worked it out. Please don’t worry.”

  Anxiety prickled her. “Of course I’m worried! You know what I’ve just signed up to do. We’ve just got a whole more serious perspective on Gerald’s world view. You know there’s only supposed to be one of each of us on board. One pair that belongs together. Or have you forgotten Gerald and his master plan? The contract that Hazel just had me sign?”

  He shook his head, his floppy fringe falling across his brow. “I know. Really…I do know.” He looked up, his eyes pleading with her. “But he’s my brother.”

  She blew out a resigned sigh. “Tell me how it happened.” His fingers were cool under her touch, but warmth raced through her as he twisted them with hers.

  “It was because of Derek.”

  “The man he was with at the bar?”

  Vincent nodded. “Yeah. They’d been a couple for about three years when Derek received a letter. It was the invitation from the commander—Gerald, apparently. Or Geraldine.”

  Penny nodded. She still had her own invitation letter tucked in a drawer, along with her important documents and identification. Invitation…ha. It was a good old-fashioned summons. Judging from the content, and how much he knew about her lifestyle, Gerald had done his homework in his selection process of his ‘guests’ as he referred to her. He’d phrased it as a matter of her free choice, but it was the threat that Gerald would reveal all he had learned about her to her wealthy family that brought her on board. The lies of her past, the men…she shuddered. She was no better off. Still whoring herself out for immoral purposes.

  She assumed everyone had been convinced in the same way, and that Gerald had really ended up with a ship full of resentful captives with no way out, because, from the very start, he’d been determined they would all be on board at launch. And he’d offered his own brand of “incentives”—at least to her— to ensure that. “Why did Gerald choose him if he lived with a man? That doesn’t fit in with Gerald or his ideas at all.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Control?” Vincent shrugged. “And Vic told me Derek is rare. He’s some sort of cold weather shifter. I don’t know all the details. Maybe Gerald needed him to complete his collection.”

  That sounded about right. Gerald didn’t have a heart. Her mind flashed to the list of names Geraldine had passed to her. “Wait. Derek’s our male polar bear? That’s not a shift I thought I’d ever hear of.”

  The only sign of Vincent’s surprise was a slight raise of his eyebrows. “Maybe. He could be. Like I said, I don’t really know. Anyway, the idea of their separation destroyed Victor. I thought I was about to see him rot. When he begged me to smuggle him on board, what could I do?”

  Penny closed her eyes, unsure of how much more she wanted to know. With every extra word she listened to, the luxury of plausible deniability slipped further from her grasp.

  “You’re tired. I should go.”

  She opened her eyes to see Vincent standing at her door and watched as he screwed his face up. Then his shoulders slumped.

  “I can’t leave.”

  “Is there something else I need to know about Victor?” Her thoughts raced.

  “No. I mean, not really, but—”

  The room stilled. It seemed even her heart paused between beats as she waited, imagining this was how a school headmistress would feel. She willed the power to just freeze Vincent right there before he said anything else, but she sneezed instead.

  He blew out a noisy sigh. “He’s gone out to see Derek. I can’t move around the ship in case someone sees both of us.”

  “What? How do you know?” She checked her communicator. It was still in its usual spot by the door.

  Vincent offered a brief gesture towards his head. “We talk.”

  Realisation hit her. “Of course you do. How else could you be so organised in your deception?”

  “I don’t know what happened tonight.” Vincent’s lips parted again, but no sound came out, and he looked around the room as though the bare walls held answers to questions he hadn’t voiced. He ran his fingers through his hair, leaving it ruffled and chaotic.

  She ignored his self-inflicted bed head and the way the sight of it started a slow burn deep within her. “It doesn’t matter what just happened. It can’t matter—it’s happened, right? It only matters what we do about it now.” Jettison. Even the word filled her with dread. The idea that she could be forced to watch Vincent launched without ceremony into space brought tears to her eyes.

  He sat beside her in an instant. “Please don’t cry. It will all work out. I will always protect you, I promise.”

  “I don’t think it’s me who needs protecting.” She let her head drop onto his shoulder. “There are so many people who could be affected by this, Vincent. Not just you, not just Victor. When Gerald finds out he has two male vampires, he could decide to cut his losses and scrap both of you. What about Raven, then?”

  “Who? Oh. Her.” He shuddered.

  “Yes, her. She doesn’t deserve this. And what about Derek? Gerald might scrap his partner, too.” She tried to recall the full list. “His mate’s name is Laila if you’re interested.”

  “His mate.” His chest rumbled as he blew out a snort. “Derek’s mate is called Vic. He chose his mate three and a half years ago.”

  Blood pounded through her ears, and she scrubbed at her forehead, pushing her frizz of hair from her skin. “Haven’t you got it yet? We don’t get to choose. We arrived two by two, Vincent. Gerald planned it, and you did your own thing. Now, the numbers are all skewed. By hiding Victor, by keeping his and Derek’s secret, you’ve guaranteed that someone will die alone, without ever meeting their match. Maybe without ever knowing love. I can’t work like this!”

  “Brighteyes, who died and made you the all-knowing? Because the answers aren’t on Geraldine’s little list of twosomes. You don’t have the right or ability to determine who should love whom. Think back to Earth. It wasn’t perfect, but people got to choose. And, there, people died, others moved on, some just loved the wrong people. Like Victor and Derek do, accordi
ng to Gerald.” He used the pad of this thumb to sweep away a tear she hadn’t realised was rolling down her cheek, and time slowed. “Like I do.” In that moment, everything was possible, anything could happen. He lowered his head and pressed his mouth to hers, applying gentle pressure with his soft, cool lips.

  Without a thought in her head, Penny relaxed into the sensation. She sighed and welcomed the tentative exploration of his tongue, then the tightening of his arms around her as his urgency increased.

  The graze of an extended fang across her lower lip brought her back to reality, and she thrust her hands against his chest. “We can’t do this.”

  “We just did.” He looked amused, as though he knew something she didn’t, and irritation flared in her.

  “I’ll deny it until my dying day.”

  Hurt clouded his eyes but was gone as he hardened his stare. He shrugged. “Whatever.”

  “Go, please.” She needed him to leave. As it was, she could barely control the shaking of her hands.

  “I can’t. I don’t know where Vic is.”

  “Ask him.”

  He closed his eyes. “He’s…busy.”

  “Then you can go?”

  “Not unless I want to sample a touch of ménage. He’s in my room.”

  Wordlessly, she rose and grabbed a pillow and an ugly wool blanket—he deserved it—from the top shelf of her cupboard. She threw both things on the floor before turning out the light and starting to undress.

  “I have fantastic night vision, you know.”

  She bit back her gasp and wriggled under her covers before turning away from him and closing her eyes. She didn’t know what he did until morning, but she pretended to sleep for a very long time.

  TEN

  VINCENT. Her first thought the following morning, even before she opened her eyes, was of him, the feel of his mouth, the kiss she’d sworn to deny. She ran her tongue over her lip where his fang had grazed her and savoured the small prick of pain she found there. Then she opened her eyes, stared up at the ceiling, remembered her contract with Geraldine, and filed the memory of Vincent’s kiss away in the darkest corner of her brain.