This Sin Called Hope (New Reality Series, Book Seven) by Anna Mayle

by Anna Mayle

“Thank you,” he wiped his eyes.

  “For what?” Jacobi asked.

  Enoch shook his head and lowered his gaze to hide his falling tears at least partially.

  “You know,” Jacobi wheedled. “If I’m better than humans, above them, then I have a duty to help them don’t I?”

  Enoch laughed through the tears and shook his head again. “You already won this argument. We’re going to the South Wall 5 from here. Denadei owes me entrance. We can rest there, resupply, and figure out where to go next.”

  “Denadei has only met you on the Network. He doesn’t know you’re an Angel.”

  Enoch shrugged, “then he should be more careful who he makes deals with. He’ll hold up his end of the bargain, or I’ll cut his security and broadcast his operation for the Governors to see. He knows that.”

  “Ooh, is he in for a shock.”

  Enoch grinned. “Tell Cora I’m coming out.” And he headed for the door.

  “Enoch?” Jacobi asked after him.

  He turned and met the eyes of the man on the screen, waiting.

  “Do you love me, Enoch?”

  “Yes, Beast.” He answered straight out of the story.

  “Well then Denadei better have a private dep tank for you to use.”

  Enoch spun on his heels and left quickly. He suddenly felt the pressing need to visit Wall 5.

  Chapter Twelve

  “We’re going to see a Wall? Is it like the Richmond Jacobi showed us?” Cora asked Enoch happily.

  “No,” Enoch tried to let the girl down gently. “Nothing like that. The Walls are filthy, crowded and dangerous places for us.”

  “Don’t tell her that!” Jacobi admonished harshly.

  “If she isn’t aware, she won’t be on guard. She’s a child, Jacobi, not stupid. The minute we’re inside, she’ll feel that something is wrong.”

  “But not everyone there is bad, Cora.” Jacobi explained.

  “Just enough that I need to be careful,” She nodded. “I can be careful.”

  Enoch cast a sidelong glance in her direction, but didn’t comment. “It’s only an hour’s ride from Richmond to Wall 5. Jacobi, can you patch me through to Denadei?”

  “Consider it done.” The hacker promised. “Cora, I’m muting you out of this one. This guy is not nice.” Moments later, Denadei’s agitated voice came over the headset.

  “It isn’t even morning yet, this doesn’t count as morning. Who are you? What do you want?”

  Enoch grinned. The man sounded nothing like his avatar. This was going to be an interesting meeting. “It’s Enoch. We’re approaching from the south, ETA fifty minutes, heading for the southeast face of the Wall. Where is your entrance located?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Denadei said solemnly.

  Enoch scoffed, “You think I patched through without securing the line? Credit please.”

  Denadei’s solemnity turned to slime the moment he heard those magic words. “We, you said. Our deal was you.”

  “I have much too much information about your dealings for you to be picky about the company I keep, but if you must know, I’m traveling with my daughter.”

  “Ooh, so you like the ladies after all.” Denadei gave a gelatinous purr.

  Jacobi snickered for Enoch’s ears only and Enoch replied, “I like one person very much, thank you.”

  Denadei made a scoffing sound. “A monogamist. I knew there was a reason I didn’t like you.”

  “You like me just fine, Denadei. When it suits your needs,” Enoch pointed out calmly.

  “Well if I like you or if I don’t, you aren’t going to be entering Wall 5 today. There’s some kind of lockdown in effect. Plague related, they say. They scorched the outer village and we’re getting rumors that they’re going to try some shit with the Network.”

  Jacobi gasped and Enoch cursed. “You offered entrance as part of your payment for services rendered. I’m going to need recompense.”

  “You know lockdown means no transfers. I got nothin’.”

  “You’ve got information, you always do.” Enoch pressed.

  Denadei snorted. “Sure, if you’re going to be traveling out there, I guess you should know. There’ve been Angel sightings all over the place. Not a pack, more like ten of them, ten packs. They have a bunch of human kids with them, and Angel kids, too. They were heading up the direction of Wall 1 last I knew, looking for someone. They can’t be heading there for the Wall though.”

  “Why?”

  “Because those rumors of plague I mentioned in our last Network meet. Turns out they weren’t just rumors. Plague got the north hard, now it’s making its way south. Wall 1 was hit heavy. They got that great lake of theirs, the water cycling all through their place. It carried the plague right in. No survivors.”

  “How do you know what happened? If no one lived to tell it, I mean?” Jacobi asked.

  “Who is that?”

  “A pain in the ass hacker,” Enoch growled but smiled at Jacobi.

  “I have my sources.” Denadei said, obviously refusing to tell them any more on the subject. “Is that good enough information?”

  “We’re good.” Enoch assured him. “Good luck not dying.”

  “Yeah, yeah, you t—,” Denadei’s flippant response was cut short as Jacobi pulled the connection free in a hurry.

  “They’ve begun corrupting their Network feeds,” the hacker explained.

  “That’s all of them but Wall 3,” Enoch noted in a worried tone. “Contact Vegen, the Keeper of Wall 3.”

  Jacobi was quiet for a while.

  “Jacobi?” Enoch asked, afraid he already knew the answer.

  “Wall 3 is locked down.”

  “Damn it!” Enoch cursed.

  Cora looked up at him sharply, “We aren’t going to the Wall, are we.”

  “No. The Walls are gone,” his voice was weak. Vegen had been a good man. Garger…he hadn’t been a bad one.

  “Did you have friends in the Walls?” she asked worriedly and put her small consoling hand on his arm.

  Enoch had never thought of them as such, but…

  “Yes,” Jacobi spoke through the earpieces. “He knew some really nice people there.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered and laid her head against the side of his leg.

  Enoch took one hand from the cyc in order to squeeze her shoulder. “We’ve all lost people in this journey.”

  Jacobi was about to protest the comment, but he stopped before the words had fully formed. He had lost someone; he’d lost his human self…or the illusion of it. He still wasn’t sure what to do about the realization. Sure, it didn’t really change too much. He was barely ever out of the Network anyway. It was the loss of the possibility that bothered him most. He couldn’t step out of the dep tank, jump on the cyc and ride north with Cora and Enoch. If Enoch was injured again, or in trouble, he would never be able to help him up.

  A pall of depression threatened at the corners of his mind, but he couldn’t let it take him. There were still things that needed to be done. A plague to sort out, there might be some lives left to save, somewhere. There had to be. “Where do we go from here?”

  The question was a very general one, but Enoch answered it simply with, “North. If both of you still want to save the world, those Angels Denadei mentioned are probably one of the keys to it. Their numbers would explain the settlement we saw before, on Man’s Road, and the ones that took Cora called her their salvation. They might have been traveling to this pack with tribute to whatever cause they need the children for. It would explain the size of the pack that attacked us, and their unwillingness to give Cora up.”

  “I don’t understand.” Cora admitted.

  Enoch shook his head and Jacobi’s screen shook with it. “Neither do I. That’s why if we want answers we should go north.” He was silent for a while before adding. “If you don’t want any more adventure, we could always go back to the shop.”

  Jacobi smiled; there had be
en a time, upon first meeting him, when that last option wouldn’t have been an option so much as the only answer. The Enoch he’d met in Wall 3 wouldn’t have thought twice about leaving humanity to the mess it had gotten itself into.

  “I’m good with playing the hero a little longer,” Jacobi announced.

  Cora chimed in too. “I want a cape.”

  “That would be dangerous on a cyc.” Enoch deadpanned setting the girl into giggles. Jacobi knew he got the reference, though. He’d found the comic books in the big desk in Enoch’s Network office.

  “I love you,” he sighed.

  Cora’s giggling got louder and Jacobi only hoped it was because Enoch was blushing.

  “North it is,” the Angel coughed and sped up, taking them off of their route to the Wall and a little further west.

  “The Erie canyon should be ahead of us…” Jacobi hinted.

  “Yes, we’ll be passing through its shallows.”

  “There’s still water in the deepest parts,” he pressed.

  “Some, not potable though,” Enoch reminded him.

  “Enough of it to submerge yourself, with walls high enough that Cora can call a warning well in advance of anyone coming upon us…”

  “Ah,” Enoch’s voice had a slight tremble in it that told Jacobi he’d finally gotten it.

  Cora, luckily, hadn’t. “There’s another lake? Can we camp the night there? Please!”

  Enoch nodded. “Sure. And if you like lakes, wait into we get above Erie. The place we’re headed used to be called the Great Lakes State. When I was a kid, they had over 20,000 lakes. Some of them were very small, but some were so big you couldn’t see from one shore to the other. A lot of the bigger lakes survived. All but the largest settlements avoided them though, because the north also has a lot of animals, very hungry ones. They use those lakes. So you have to stay close.

  Jacobi watched her nod, eyes wide from Enoch’s point of view. He wasn’t sure if the wide eyes were from fear at the thought of the animals, or awe at the sheer amount of water they’d be seeing.

  She spent the rest of the trip in silent contemplation or curled up in her sidecar dreaming of water.

  “It will be dangerous,” Enoch told him once Cora had nodded off. “We still don’t know what’s going on. It isn’t right to bring a child into this.”

  “If we leave her behind she’ll die by purge or hunger or any number of slow and horrible things, or she’ll end up with the Angels. She has a better chance with us, no matter where we take her.” Jacobi reasoned.

  “What are you hoping we’ll find, Jacobi?”

  He shrugged, then spoke up when he realized once again that Enoch couldn’t see him. “I don’t know. Answers, hope, maybe a future.”

  “Even if we don’t find any of those things, I’ll make them happen for Cora,” Enoch insisted.

  Jacobi smiled. He wanted very much to throw himself at the wonderful man and show just how much he appreciated that promise. “How far to the Erie Canyon?”

  Enoch chuckled.

  * * * *

  Five hours later, they’d set up a base camp, Enoch posted a perimeter of small cameras. They were a luxury and would drain power, just like his porting into the Network would, but Cora needed the cameras, so they could be sure she was safe, and he and Jacobi both needed a moment to touch and breathe and be.

  He slung Cora’s pod between the cyc and one of the camera posts. It wasn’t ideal, but it would keep her off the ground.

  In hindsight it seemed a silly thing to worry about since the first thing she did upon completing set up was to strip down to her underclothes and start playing in the wet sand at the lake’s edge.

  “It’s like the ground after it rains, but it goes deeper!” she crowed happily, “There’s no sand underneath!”

  Enoch nodded, stripped down to his own undergarments, removed goggles and ear piece, and stepped into the water. “You know what to do?”

  She nodded distractedly.

  “Cora, look at me,” he ordered. “This is important.”

  “The cameras will beep in my ear if they see something, if that happens, I hide in the hole you found in the wall and tap the thingy in my ear.”

  “And you’ll stay there quietly,” Enoch added.

  She nodded and went back to playing.

  It would be fine. They’d found no evidence that anyone had been down there for a very long time. But it only took once, too…

  Enoch shook his head, sank his plug in firmly, and submerged. He weighted himself down to the largest rocks he could find then closed his eyes.

  Jacobi was waiting when he opened them. The room was opulent, centered on a massive bed covered in soft looking blankets and surrounded by sheer gauzy curtains that waved around him instead of three of the walls. Where the headboard should have been was a waterfall that came from nowhere and disappeared into the floor where it ran under his feet but never touched them. The lighting was deep, sensuous amber, from a fireplace a short distance from the bed set into a rock wall, furs in front of it, welcoming.

  The beautiful hacker lay luxuriating in the soft bed. Arms high above a head haloed by golden curls, his lean body stretched taunt, and at the same time, open to him. His proud cock jutted up hard and weeping, oh so wanting. Around its base and his balls was a gold ornament of some sort. A ring.

  “This,” Enoch smirked, “is very…sensual.”

  Jacobi smiled widely at him. “I had a lot of time to plan while you were angsting and Cora was sleeping.”

  Enoch sauntered forward and Jacobi stretched again, wiggled his hips a bit and licked his full and wanting lips.

  “Say it again,” Jacobi’s request came out more of an order.

  “Say what?” Enoch asked with a known grin.

  “Do you love me?”

  Enoch’s expression softened into a real smile. “You were very insistent.”

  Jacobi proved Enoch’s words by insisting, “Do you love me?”

  “Yes,” he finally gave his hacker the words he’d been looking for.

  “Well then, this works better with you on the bed,” Jacobi invited playfully.

  Enoch dove forward, straddled the smaller man and caught his mouth all in one swift motion. Their tongues met and danced around each other. Jacobi’s hips bucked and arms encircled Enoch’s shoulders tightly. He followed Enoch’s mouth up until the angle forced them apart. “I find it works better with me on you,” Enoch corrected him.

  Jacobi groaned his agreement.

  “I’ve barely touched you,” Enoch smoothed one large hand over the extremely responsive man’s side, down to his hip.

  “I had…” Jacobi wriggled as the touch went lower, around to his inner thigh. “I had a lot of time.”

  “Have you been playing with yourself? Or maybe you made a bot of me again. A conveniently obedient sex doll with all of the right…attributes?” Enoch crawled up Jacobi’s prone and needy body again, buried his face in the crook of his neck, nipped his throat, nibbled his way along the shell of his ear.

  “Toys,” the hacker admitted. “Just toys.”

  “And you haven’t let yourself come yet?” Enoch asked, running one rough finger around the thick engorged member before him, massaging the slit as he spoke.

  Jacobi jumped and lifted his hips off the bed in a motion so spastic it had to be involuntary. “N…No.” he admitted. “The ring, I found it looking through Denadei’s files. It stops me from…It takes more to…Oh skies! Enoch, just get inside of me!”

  “No,” Enoch whispered into the ear he’d been attending. “I like watching you like this. The way you move under me, it’s like you’re dancing.” He rubbed his own straining need against Jacobi’s inner thigh, but refused to move higher, not yet. He was enjoying the visual before him very much. “What toys have you been using? I want to see.”

  “Enoch! Don’t tease,” Jacobi begged.

  “Show me,” he insisted.

  Jacobi whimpered, his face flush with aro
usal and embarrassment all at once. He managed to pull himself to a kneeling position, legs spread. The bed beneath him rose and shifter, hardened into a thick rod with a rounded tip. The lithe hacker lowered himself as it raised just enough and cried out as the piece lodged firmly within him.

  Enoch’s own cock jumped at the sight. “That is…” he felt the insert as Jacobi rose and fell upon it. It was ringed in little ribs and moved under his touch, gave, like flesh. “You picked up a lot of naughty tricks from those files.” Enoch approved.

  He watched Jacobi ride for a while, enjoying the flush of need to his face, the vulnerable want. The hacker had driven himself nearly to mindlessness with desire and all Enoch had to do was touch him and the man would be his.

  The wait was becoming too much.

  Enoch slipped behind Jacobi, pulled him from the toy and thrust him hard onto Enoch’s own straining member. Jacobi cried out at the unexpected change, but happily continued riding the treat he’d been offered. His back fit perfectly against Enoch’s chest.

  The rhythm was good, but not hard enough. Enoch flexed and spilled the wanton hacker forward onto the bed, pushed his upper body low and slammed hard into his raised and wanting ass.

  “Yes! Harder!” Jacobi cried out and raised himself as much as he could.

  Enoch was more than happy to oblige, but with one minor alteration. He flipped Jacobi to his back and with one hard tug, lifted Jacobi’s legs up onto his shoulders and leaned in, bending the supple body nearly in half. The position placed his own hard need snuggly on the crease of the hacker’s ass. The young man panted, mouth open and eyes half-lidded. He fought to raise himself high enough for another kiss, but as long as Enoch remained where he was, all Jacobi could do was struggle and flex and moan.

  “Please,” Jacobi begged. “Enoch, please!”

  That was all the command he needed. Enoch pulled back to position himself and drove home hard. The wonderful sensations lighting up every nerve in his body were nothing compared to the rush of watching that beautiful golden hair tangle with their motion, that face flush darker and those eyes go dreamy.

  When he came, Enoch swore Jacobi glowed. When Enoch followed, he came completely apart, and welcomed that glow into himself.