Jacky threw up his hand in perceived relief that Jeb understood the crux of it. “Looks like it.”
Jacky was on the verge of manhood, over six feet, chestnut hair deepened to dark brown, his eyes the same jewel-like green they'd been since that first ill-fated jump to Three.
He'd skipped right over all his awkward adolescence and landed on the good side, gaining the muscles and height without the acne.
The arrogant edge that came with young-male territory remained firmly in place, Jeb noted.
“Time moved on here. You simply can't stay the age you were on Three when five years have passed on Papilio.”
“I'm not complaining. I look kick ass!” He flexed his muscles for emphasis.
Jeb did a slow perusal. He looked as he should.
Jacky noted, “You don't look any different.”
“I am Reflective.”
Jacky made a sound in the back of his throat. “Yeah, and that makes all the difference?”
“Yes.”
They stared at each other.
“What about Maddie? I thought you said she'd be safe.”
Jeb hung his head.
The females.
When his head rose, he clashed with eyes that held an artificially gained maturity they should not have had.
“Ya don't know, do you?”
Jeb shook his head. “We will ascertain much by just finding my comrades.”
“Are these backstabbers like Ryan…?”
“No, these are real Reflectives, not”—Jeb spoke to the floor—“not the Reflective Ryan has become.”
Jeb dare not let himself speculate about the ousted Rachett.
Jeb straightened, taking a look around his dwelling. He clapped Jacky on the back. “Grab some nourishment, I don't know when our next meal will come.”
“No offense, Merrick, but after five years—you don't have anything worth foraging for.”
Jeb clenched his teeth.
Beth.
“Let's go.”
“We're finding Madeline, right?”
Eventually.
“Yes.”
“Okay, let's blow this Popsicle stand.”
Jeb stood for a moment, translating the slang.
He nodded. “Let's.”
They left the way they'd come—in stealth.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Beth held the flinch inside as Ryan fought off four bloodlings before the fifth and sixth joined in, bringing the Reflective to his knees.
Blood fell in a constant stream from his mouth.
His gaze locked on Beth.
“Don't look at her, hopper,” said a young bloodling, perhaps eighteen cycles.
“You shall not look upon our females.”
Beth did tense then. They were staking species claim on her.
Ryan wasn't finished, though. He caught the arrogant bloodling’s muscular leg mid-swing. He twisted the ankle, and the bloodling screamed in agony as Ryan broke it and surged forward.
Stopping a Reflective was nearly impossible. They had brought him down but not arrested his momentum.
He would get his hands on her.
They need more males.
Beth tore away from the male who held her.
She had thought seven against one was good odds, but Ryan was a vicious fighter. He'd been the best in hand-to-hand combat in their class of twenty-odd recruits.
She bounded over the top of the sand dune, with Ryan in hot pursuit.
Beth was simply outclassed. If she were Ryan's size, she would have a chance, but pound for pound, inch for inch—it was too much disparity.
A strong hand clamped down on her shoulder and spun her around. Ryan's face was a pulverized mask of blood. Beth didn't hesitate, jabbing him in the throat with everything she had. She closed her eyes against the blood spray as he wrapped her lower body with his arms and slammed her onto the sand.
A hard surface would have broken her back. As it was, her teeth snapped together, but she found she still had breath in her lungs to scream.
She shrieked in Ryan's face, full bodied, releasing every bit of loathing, rage, and accumulated injustices in the long agonized wail.
He hesitated in surprise, and she bit the hand he’d clamped over her mouth, bringing her knee up as she did. Ryan deflected it with his own leg and spread her legs with his knees as she lay beneath him. He pinned her arms above her head with one powerful hand.
Her panic flared.
He's too big!
Beth fought in earnest.
Ryan flipped his bleeding hand off her mouth, and she bellowed into his face. He grunted as a foot landed on his rib cage like an interfering insect sting.
He wound his hands around Beth's throat, ignoring everything but ending her life.
She bucked her hips, but his knee kept her legs wide, splayed like a bug on a scientist's board, pinned and helpless.
Beth would have given anything for a reflection. Her eyes scanned the midnight blanket behind the pale moon and faded stars, her hands locked tight against his straining arms, pushing him off as he dug against her deeper.
Fight!
Beth's eyes began to get heavy on the forever twilight of the sky. Her hands fell away, plopping to the sand.
Her vision dimmed.
Through the slits of her fading eyesight, two hands clamped down on Ryan's neck.
Breathe, Beth commanded dimly.
The hands pulled Ryan off her, and eyes like the deepest part of night peered into her face, but she was too oxygen deprived to fight back.
Beth fought to hold on to her slipping consciousness, trying to swim against the tide of her abused esophagus toward healing oxygen.
She lost.
*
Beth was floating.
Again.
She didn't know where she was. Her eyes fluttered open and latched onto a wooden box of a room. It was dark, but she could make out the shape of each tongue-in-groove board of the wood. A window without glass framed a view of a dense tree canopy.
Beth sat up, and her clothes began to steam. She lifted her hands and could make out the pruning of her palms and fingertips.
She was in a huge tub of black liquid. She wrinkled her nose in distaste.
She struggle to get out of the tub, then a voice from the shadowed darkness of the room said, “Stop. I will help you.”
Beth almost fell, but she gripped the edge.
“Who—” Her voice cracked, and she tried again, “Who are you?”
Fuck this. “Where is Ryan?”
Beth hated the fear that stretched her voice into a thin breathy whisper.
“We left him for the nightlopers.”
Beth shuddered. Even a Reflective would be hard pressed to escape that species.
Barely humanoid, they had evolved specifically to hunt—to kill. Another evolved Sector Seven mess.
“They'll kill him,” Beth said in a flat voice.
The bloodling who had saved her moved into the vague moonlight, which was brighter now that true night had fallen.
A fierce shriek sounded and Beth flinched.
There they are. The mournful howls of the nightlopers filling the night.
“Where are we?”
Her eyes found his in the darkness. Like black coins in the pearl-gray flesh of his face, they were silver in the moonlight.
“We are safe from those below.”
Chatty male.
Beth swung wet hair out of her face and noticed that her throat felt better than it should. She rotated it again.
Near perfect, tender, but workable.
She peered down at the water swirling around her legs.
Not water—blood.
Beth scrambled out of the tub, and the bloodling laughed from his belly.
He reached out and clamped onto her arms, steadying her.
Attempting to escape would have been useless. They were in a fort in the trees, with nightlopers beneath them, Ryan wasn’t certainly dead, and she
was in dire need of sustenance. Beth hung her head.
Despair choked her.
She longed for Jeb, for Papilio.
“I am Slade.”
Beth's head jerked up. “Who? The Slade?”
“There isn't another one.”
Bloodlings went by only one name; no two were alike. In the lore, bloodlings’ history spoke of vampire jumpers from Sector Seven who had landed on One, never to return. Those jumpers had evolved into the bloodlings.
She studied him by the light of the moon. His body was like a Reflective's; he had long, muscular legs made for jumping and wide-set eyes with unusually large irises, perfect for night and peripheral vision.
Beth remembered that she possessed the most acute night vision of any Reflective.
“Does my reputation precede me?”
His amusement at the mess she was obviously in pissed Beth off.
She folded her arms across her soaking chest. “I've never jumped to One.”
Slade released her arms, and she rubbed where his hands had been, hating the way they'd felt on her.
Right.
“Then why do you know of me?”
“Because you're in the lore.”
“Ah,” his palm held his chin. Slade's lips mocked her with a ghost of a smile. “So you are a fresh Reflective.” It wasn't a question.
Be polite. He rescued me from Ryan.
“Yes,” she all but hissed.
He smiled, no fangs present.
More howling and snarls presented beneath them and Beth moved to the window that was at her waist.
She gazed many meters below just as a nightloper caught sight of her form in the window.
Beth didn't move away. Let it see what she was and feel fear.
Reflectives were renowned for claiming victory despite being severely outnumbered.
“Step away,” Slade said.
Beth ignored him.
He jerked her back, and she wrestled in his grip. “Do you think you can get away, tiny one?”
“If I was willing to hurt you—yes.”
Slade released her immediately, and she whirled to face him, her hands in loose combative posture, her knees slightly bent—her stomach digesting her spine.
Her empty belly growled, and the noise filled the room.
It took all the threat out of the moment, and Beth gritted her teeth.
Slade chuckled then laughed—then he roared.
“Yeah, laugh it up.”
He put a fist over his mouth.
“Let us establish who's in charge here,” Slade began.
Beth put a thumb to her chest. “I'm in charge of me.”
Slade's dark eyes lit on her then he was suddenly in front of her, using a blurring tactic of speed that was a holdover of his vamp lineage.
His hand cupped the back of her neck, strong fingers tightening to her uppermost threshold of pain.
“Reflective,” he whispered, his hot breath licking along her temple, his fingers dizzyingly hard against her spine.
“I could have killed you thirty times before now. I have no desire to do so. Do not make me commit violence against a female of our species for stubborn pride.”
Beth wanted to tap out, as she'd seen the cage fighters of Three do when they could not escape a classic break of a limb, a loss of consciousness, or imminent death.
Reflectives did not tap out.
The pressure around her neck increased at the same time cool lips trailed from her temple to her cheekbone.
The sensation rocked back and forth, back and forth, from pain to pleasure.
“No,” Beth moaned in a low, pain-choked voice.
His sudden release of pressure made Beth fall forward as his mouth covered hers in an erotic surprise of heat and skin.
Slade groaned as he bent her body back, arcing her torso deeper into his.
Beth grabbed his shoulders to maintain her balance.
Warmth burst from her chest, lighting every connection in her body, her bare toes the only thing on the ground.
The weight of his mouth slowly lifted, and Beth was still bent backward, stunned and breathless, out of control.
A bloodling had saved her in Sector One from another Reflective, captured her, healed her in a bath of blood, then kissed her without permission.
Beth felt light-headed.
She could justify losing consciousness while getting strangled by Ryan. But now?
“Let me down,” Beth said, and Slade's arms fell away, dumping her.
Beth's palms slapped the ground instinctively and broke her fall. She rolled over into a sitting position and put her head between her knees.
It had woken her up: his kiss, the way he'd dropped her without warning, and her miserable hunger.
Just then, her traitor stomach gave another tortured howl.
Principle, help me.
Slade stuck out his hand. Beth glared at the proffered palm. With a grunt, she took it.
“When did you eat last, tiny frog?”
“Okay.” Beth poked his chest with her finger. “Stop calling me an amphibian.”
He caught her finger, taking it inside his hot wet mouth, and Beth was left with her next words wedged in her throat.
Slade slid it out achingly slowly.
Beth reclaimed her hand. The silence became weighted.
His eyebrow cocked.
“Do you know what we call Reflectives?”
She shook her head.
Her brain's wires were crossed. Beth felt as if she’d short-circuited.
“No,” she said and folded her arms across her stomach. It was so empty that she could feel her heartbeat thumping against her forearm.
“Hoppers. That is what you do. Using the sectors like personal lily pads. So what is wrong with you being my tiny frog?” He asked the question as though it were perfectly reasonable.
“First…” she glared at him, hands on her hips, wishing for weapons. “We don't hop—we jump.”
He waved a strong hand around. “Hop, jump, skip, vault, bounce, leap, hurdle… dive.”
“Principle—okay.”
He smirked.
“Just so we have an understanding.”
“We have an understanding.” She nodded vigorously, “I understand that you're holding me prisoner.”
“Leave,” Slade invited, swinging out his palm.
Beth moved to the door, and a pack of nightlopers stood at the bottom of the great tree the fort was embedded in.
Their eyes reflected back at her.
She expelled a tormented sigh of pure frustration. She could not jump from organics.
“Such a tease, eh?” Slade asked softly. “All those reflective orbs but none that you can use?”
Hate bit at her. “Why did you pull me away from the window?”
He said nothing for a time.
“I was hoping they would not mark you.”
“Why?”
“I do not want to fight off nightlopers that have their sights set on one of our females. Why do you think they persist at our feet.”
“Because you're an asshole?” Beth cracked.
Slade grabbed her, jerking her to him.
“I'm an asshole that broke six of that Reflective's ribs for hurting you. I should have killed him. But—a visit from whatever hierarchy Papilio still holds I do not need.”
Beth's heart thumped against her ribcage. The howling nightlopers swirled around the great trunk as Slade dangled part of her body over the wood railing of his dwelling.
“Drop me,” Beth challenged. “I will fight them.”
Bare handed. To the death.
“They do not want to fight you, tiny frog,” he whispered so softly that she strained to hear.
Her heart's rhythm picked up to a murderous drum beat.
Beth's stores of knowledge fell short on the nightlopers; foreigners to Sector One knew little of them.
She could see Slade would tell her. Beth knew she would not like it. His lo
ng bound hair swung around and tickled her as he leaned forward to whisper in her ear.
“They want to mate with you.”
Then he released her, and Beth was falling into the darkness filled with excited yips and snuffles.
It was a testimony to Beth's bravery that she did not cry out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Jeb was stunned when he saw the first Reflective female, milling around at the top of the marble steps of TCH. It was Daphne, and she was dressed for… well—Jeb wasn't sure. There was more flesh than clothing.
Jacky was certain, though. “Wow, nice whore house, Merrick.”
Jeb turned in an instant rage on the young man.
He backed up, holding up his hands. “I'm just sayinʼ, Merrick, looks like The Cause Headquarters have become…”
Jeb's eyes moved to what used to be TCH, and he knew, no matter how shocking or how untoward, that what Jacky had said was true.
The Reflective females no longer fulfilled clerical duties—but those of the bed.
Daphne's eyes skated over Jeb with an absolute lack of interest, then her head whipped back around, recognition flooding her face.
“Jeb,” she cried, running down the wide marble steps in heels and a dress so short that Jeb could feel the heat infuse his face and neck.
He was humiliated for her.
Jacky was trying studiously to avoid looking at her but finally gave up. The Reflective female was a thing of beauty to be admired.
Now reduced to a whore.
She threw herself into his arms and he caught her easily.
Daphne smelled of other men.
He gently put her away from him. He searched her face, his nostrils filling with some insidious scent that ran underneath the obvious.
Opiates.
Who is drugging the fairer Reflectives?
The answer presented itself with a curt, “Daphne!”
She flinched, letting the strap of the barely-there dress slip. Fingerprint bruises lined her delicate collarbone and shoulder.
Jeb saw red. He had lain with Daphne several times and had been a gentle and attentive lover. He would have never brought her to harm.
He would kill any male who hurt their females.
What could he to do when the protectors had become the predators?
“This is fucking bad, Merrick,” Jacky restated the obvious, his eyes fixed on those bruises.
“Go—Jeb,” Daphne said in a low voice, slipping out of his hold and looking behind her like a canine that had been kicked too many times.
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