“I, ah, do you want me to take care of that?”
“While I’d like to say yes, we need to eat. We can’t stay in bed all day.”
“Why not?”
“Can you do me a favor and put some clothes on? It’s very distracting trying to carry on a conversation with you in such a state.”
“You don’t like me naked, then?”
My patience runs thin. I tear my hand through my too-long hair and blow out my breath. “What do you think?”
She grins. “I think you like me naked.”
“Of course I like you naked! Christ, Serena, I’ve fucked you every way but sideways. No, I take that back. I’ve fucked you sideways, too. I can’t think straight when you’re naked. Now put on some fucking clothes!”
“Jeez. You don’t have to be so testy.” She walks to the closet to dress. Her ass sways seductively as she sashays. She’s doing this on purpose. I growl because I want to tackle her, throw her on the floor, and take her right where she stands. I have very little control around this woman. But I’m going to have to gain some because I can’t afford to stay in bed all day with her, as I’d like.
“You wear your bruises well.” Her ass is covered in a very light dusting of purple where I bit and nibbled it during our lovemaking. Looking at it makes me want to do it all over again.
“Do I? I hadn’t noticed.”
“Do they hurt?” I need to know because I don’t want to cause her pain. I’ve done enough of that already.
“No. Like I said, I hadn’t noticed.”
“Good. Your ass was made for that.”
She faces me and says, “Sabin, if you keep talking, you’re going to have to do something about this.”
“About what?”
“The state you’ve put me in.” Her voice is sultry.
“Finish dressing and eat, Serena.” I sit and begin to do so myself. The food tastes like sand.
She soon joins me and eats. “So, will you tell me what happened yesterday?”
When I found her missing, I was a maniac. Verus did a search and discovered her on that stupid boat. We located her and when I did that mind invasion, I never expected her to react like that. “As I told you, it was highly unusual. You should have never responded as such.”
“How did I get back here?”
“We had to use the Transcender, which may have amplified your response. You’re not used to it. And it can leave some strange side effects. We also had to erase the memories of your comrades. They don’t remember you being on the boat.”
“What about Dan?”
“We took care of him, too.”
“What made my head stop hurting?”
“Medication. When you awakened, it was gone. But I have bad news. The Shaurok are gone. When they didn’t show up with you out there, we now have to assume they have Judgment Day. This is terrible news for us. We have to go and seek it out.”
“How do you know where to search?”
“We go to their Mastermind.”
“Mastermind?”
“He’s the one who controls the Shaurok.”
“Oh, I think you mentioned that before. So where is this Mastermind?”
“We have to locate him because he moves around.”
“How?”
“You are filled with questions, aren’t you?” I really wish she’d stop because I don’t like giving her all these answers.
“Well, if we’re going after this Master Dude, I’d like to know where he is.”
“Serena, we are not going anywhere. You are going to my home where you’ll be safe for the foreseeable future. My men and I will seek out the Mastermind.”
“Wait! You’re going to drop me off on some strange planet and abandon me?”
Dammit! I knew she would object to this. “It’s not like that. There are people there that will keep you company and protect you.”
“But I want to stay with you.”
“It’s far too dangerous. I can’t put you in that situation.”
“I insist.”
“You are untrained. You could die.”
“Train me.”
“Absolutely not. You watched us fight. I will not expose you to that.”
“Then put me in the sec center. I can help there.”
“No. Serena, I will not relent on this.”
“Then I stay here.”
“Is that skull of yours fashioned out of steel? Because it’s hard as hell.”
“No harder than yours.” And she stands up, crosses her arms, and taps that damn toe of hers. Now I’m in for it.
“This is not up for discussion.”
“You’re right. It’s not.” She sits back down in a huff, eats her food like an automaton, and when she’s finished, goes into the bathroom and locks the door behind her.
I carry the tray back to the kitchen to face the men. They’re all present and accounted for and I know what they’re all thinking when I walk in.
Rafe pipes in, “You having fun back there?”
“I swear to god, I’m going to knock every one of your teeth out if I hear another word out of you about her.” I throw the tray down, hearing plates break, and tromp out of there. But then I turn around, see a sea of laughing faces that I want to punch, and say, “She fucking wants to come with us. To find the Mastermind. Laugh now, assholes.” Every one of their smiles turn into gaping maws.
“She can’t do that,” Edge says. “That’s crazy.”
“Don’t you think I’ve told her that? She wants to learn to fight. Stubborn woman. You try talking to her while you’re marking her. I’m up to here with it,” and I slice my finger across the top of my head.
“You’re serious? You want me to talk to her?”
“I want anyone to talk to her because she obviously doesn’t believe me!” I throw a chair and it breaks when it hits the wall. Dammit, I swore to myself I was done with breaking furniture. Fuck. It. All.
“What should I say?” Edge asks.
“I don’t know. Tell her anything. Tell her giant squid live where we’re going and they’ll suction her head off with their tentacles only after they squirt her with their poisonous ink.”
“I can’t do that! She’ll know it’s a lie.”
“Edge, you dumbass, I’m joking. Come up with something plausible for fuck’s sake. I need someone to convince her this is a life or death scenario.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“You have sisters, yeah?”
“One.”
“Use your sister logic to get her off this crazy notion. Tell her about my home. Let her think it’s a fantasy land, complete with pink ponies.”
“Well, Sabin, we can create pink ponies for her if she wants them.”
Aw, for the love of …” I throw my hands up in the air. “Maybe you better take this, Rafe.”
“No, I think Edge is better suited.” Rafe shakes as he holds back a laugh.
“You think this is funny?” My temper teeters on the edge of a blast that is akin to what Judgment Day can produce.
“Calm down, Sabin. She’s not going anywhere with us. We’ll get this situation under control. You’re going to stroke out on us here.”
I seethe with unleashed fury. Rafe looks around the room and he says to Verus, “Do you know where Helios is?”
“In the exercise station.”
“Sabin, get down there. You need to let off that steam you’re barely containing. In the meantime, we’ll handle Serena.”
Rafe is right. I usually work out with Helios every day and I haven’t since … I can’t remember.
When I walk in the station, Helios is prepared for me. He’s laying out our fighting protective gear. Pads and gloves, face masks and helmets. And we begin. He wears my ass out, taking me out with several well aimed strikes, but then I’m back in the game and retaliate. When my game is on, he can’t ever best me. And my game is on. Frustrations evaporate and I land kick after kick, jab after jab. But Helios is a tough bastard and do
esn’t go down … ever. We normally have to call it quits after about an hour or two of this. But today, he nails me in the ribs, exactly where I’ve just healed, and it buckles me like a punctured balloon. I go down in a puff of air, as it wheezes right out of my chest. For a couple of minutes, I can’t inhale. He’s not only broken my ribs again, but I think my lungs are affected.
“You okay?” he asks.
I can’t respond. I hold up my hand. My chest is on fire as pain rips through me. At last, when I can speak, I explain.
“Shit, man, I’m on it.” He heads to the kitchen to get the medical kit. He comes back and starts to wave the wand over my injuries. Why is it I’m the one that gets to use this thing all the time?
“Your woman has you distracted.”
“You think?”
“I know. You’re off. Pull it together. If I were a Shaurok, you’d be dead right now. How you gonna fight the Mastermind?”
Of all the men, Helios is the most taciturn, never saying much unless he has to. The fact that he’s told me this much speaks volumes. It’s like he’s screaming at me.
“You don’t have the entire picture.”
“Doesn’t matter. I don’t need it. You’re our commander. Shut her down if you have to. We have a mission here. A very important mission, Sabin.”
“Are you scolding me, Helios?”
“Guess I am, sir. Chew my ass out if you want. Doesn’t matter. It needed to be said.”
“So, since we’re on the subject and since you’re so free with your advice, what do you propose I do?”
“Pack her up and let’s get the fuck out of here. Go home. Regroup and do what we’re supposed to be doing. Find Judgment Day.”
“You make it sound so easy.”
“You’re the one making it so fucking difficult.”
I arch a brow. “It is difficult, Helios. There’s a lot going on that you aren’t aware of.”
“Such as?”
“The Council …”
“Fuck the Council. They’re not the once risking their necks. We are. If they see another way, let them get off their asses and find the damn thing.”
“Such bold words.”
“Bold, yet true.”
When I was Helios’ age, I thought as he does. Change the world. Change the universe. But then you have the naysayers and the ones who control the bank. The ones with power. And as much as you hate it, despise it, you find yourself bowing before them, agreeing to their terms, to get the job done, only to compromise part of your integrity. It’s a disgusting universe all around.
“I don’t disagree with you, yet it’s not a battle we will win. They control the money and when they control that, we’re fucked.”
“So what then? We let them walk all over us? Tell us how to do our jobs? How to put our necks on the line for them?”
The way he says it pisses even me off. I’ve been around and around with the argument for I don’t know how long and I always end up at the same conclusion. Do as the Council says.
“I don’t have any other solution.”
“Come on, Sabin, you’re better than this.”
“Yes, in the field and in front of you, and the rest of the team. But dealing with a bunch of idiotic bureaucrats, no. They put their spin on everything until my fight isn’t worth a damn.”
“Then steal Judgment Day and Paradox and use it for your own means. Force them to listen to you.”
“Bloody fucking hell. Helios, do you know what you’re saying? That’s treason. A crime punishable by death.”
He shrugs, like he hasn’t a care in the world. “Yeah, I know. We risk dying every day. What else is new?”
Helios is older than Edge, but not by much. His hair is cut short, military style and it’s blond. But he likes to dye it odd colors sometimes. Right now it’s deep green. His eyes are the palest green, but they are rimmed in dark gold. He’s quiet, introspective, and cunning. He only speaks when he has something important to say and never runs his mouth, which is why I’m listening to him now. For someone so young, he is unusually perceptive about people.
“As your commander, it’s my duty to care about your life. Whether you live or die has great meaning to me. The fact that we risk our necks isn’t something I take lightly. When we do, we become reckless and then danger ensues.”
“It’s not that I don’t care. I do. Greatly. But I care about our team and our values even more than I care about the Council and their obtuse rules. That is my point, Sabin. I will risk my life in doing the right thing. Getting Judgment Day and Paradox into the right hands, namely ours, is the right thing to do. We will guard it with our lives, we won’t do foolish and greedy things for it, and we will make peace because of it.”
“How did you get to be so fucking wise?”
“I listen instead of running my trap like Edge does.” He smiles and I can’t help but laugh with him.
“If we do this, the vote has to be put forth and it has to be unanimous.”
“Agreed.”
“We need to hold a meeting then to reach a consensus.”
“And then can we get the hell out of this place? I want to go home. I miss Kernell’s cooking.”
“As do I.”
If he thinks for one solitary minute he’s leaving me behind, I’ll walk out of this place and he’ll never see me again. He thinks he can boss me around like some employee, well I’ll show him. I pace the floor, trying to burn off my anger. Why can’t he see that I can be a resource for him?
I’m so engrossed in my angry thoughts, I jump when I hear the knock on the door.
“Who is it?” I snap.
“It’s Edge.”
“Come in.”
Edge walks in and he looks frightened of me. No doubt Sabin has told him stories of my temper.
“What do you want?” I’m not in the mood to beat around the bush.
“I came to explain some things to you and to give you Sabin’s mark.”
“Sabin’s mark? Why can’t he do it?”
Edge looks at me, then glances at his feet. “It’s not that he couldn’t. I asked if I could. I think …” he looks up at me and again I’m struck by the glory of his eyes. It’s hard to pull my gaze off of his irises. “Do you mind if I sit down?”
“Not at all.”
He takes a seat on the side of the bed. This is odd. “Come.” He points to the spot next to him. “Sabin has done you a great honor.”
“Sabin has insulted me.”
“How so?”
“He thinks I’m incapable of assisting the team.”
“And you are.”
When I begin to object, Edge stops me. “Hear me out, Serena. You can’t possibly understand the situation we are about to face. You’ve only had a mere taste of what we do, and you saw what Sabin looked like when he came back here.”
“Your magic wand healed him.” I’m prickly as I sit next to him, my hand fidgeting with the hem of my shirt.
“The truth is, he would’ve healed on his own without the wand. It would’ve taken days, but he would’ve survived. That is the difference between you and us. Our bodies have experienced evolutionary changes yours hasn’t. We are stronger. You are weak. So to make a flimsy comparison, we are more similar to homo sapiens and you are more like the Neanderthal. Even our brains are more fully developed, more compact. We have an additional cerebellum, we have an extra lobe in our cerebrum, our brain stem is more sensitive to information but also better protected, and our meninges are almost impenetrable. Even the soft tissues in our body are more difficult to injure by the sheer virtue of their density. It’s not just the magic wand. You, Serena, are a much more fragile species than we are.”
He waits for me to digest this information.
“Why didn’t Sabin tell me this? He’s such an asshole sometimes.”
Edge chuckles. “Sabin is Sabin. And there is no other like him. The fact that he has claimed you, and you not being his equal is an amazement.”
I brist
le at his words. “What exactly do you mean by me not being his equal?”
“Not what you’re thinking. It’s only that you are not his equal. For the reasons I just explained to you. He will always have to worry about you, because of your fragility.”
“Why should he worry about that?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
Now I’m confused. He must be able to see it because he gives me an odd look.
“Damn, woman, you’re as hard headed as he is. He cares for you. If he didn’t he would never have claimed you. Sabin could have his pick of any woman he’d choose. But he chose you. There’s a reason for that.”
“He said it was for my protection.”
“Trust me, Serena. We’ve had to watch over and protect many women. Never once has Sabin come close to claiming one, nor have I scented him on them. Until you.”
I chew on this for a while. “He wants to take me away from here.”
“To safety. To his home. We all live there and you’ll love it. It’s magnificent.”
“You all live in his home? Like some commune or something?”
Edge tilts his head as if he’s calculating what I said. Then I get my answer. “Yes, like a commune. The Seven don’t separate. We remain together for the most part, at all times.”
This is one weird group of men.
“Not weird. We have to remain together because of what we do. We are entrusted with the safety of Paradox.”
I poke him in the chest with my index finger. “Stay out of my head. It’s rude.”
“It’s the way we are, Serena. Part of our evolutionary process.”
“Call it what you will. I say it’s rude.”
“Very well.” He dismisses my comment. “There is sound reason we stay together. Sometimes we have to leave quickly to hunt our threat. If we are separated, it makes it difficult to do that.”
The idea of living with seven men isn’t my notion of fun. Then a thought strikes me. “Are any of you married?”
He laughs. “Marriage is not very common among our species. Claiming is preferred.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Calm down. Our species doesn’t consider marriage necessary. We consider claiming to be adequate.”
This is not good. “Are you telling me that I am tied to Sabin, much like being married to him?”
Sabin, A Seven Novel Page 15
