Night Betrayed

by Joss Ware

  “And,” she said quickly, to fill the moment, “what if she gets pregnant?”

  “Don’t want to be a granny just yet?” he asked, turning to smile at her.

  He was so close. Right there. But, they were hardly touching—just the brush from his arm’s hair against hers. “It’s not that,” she said. “I don’t think he’s ready to be a father, and I know Jennifer’s not ready to be settling down with a seventeen-year-old boy.”

  “You know this the same way you know that I couldn’t be at all interested in hanging around a woman who seems to be twice my age. Right?”

  Selena rolled her eyes. “The situation is a lot different. He’s hardly a grown man yet, first of all. She can’t really be interested in him. She never even looked at him before. And I’m sure if you were to give her any attention at all or show any interest in her, she’d drop him like a rock. You know?”

  He looked at her steadily. “I hope you’re not suggesting that I give her some attention in order to distract her from Sam.”

  She bit her lip and looked at him hopefully. “You could.”

  His brows drew together. “And how would that make me look? I’ve already had the pleasure of being lectured by your son in regards to my intentions. He wasn’t pleased.”

  “What?” Selena felt a mixed wave of shock and delight. Theo was smiling at her. “He wasn’t pleased, but he was very polite. And very firm. And in regards to Jennifer—I’ll tell you what I told him: there’s no interest there on my part.”

  “Well . . . okay. But if you just gave her a little attention—just to see if I’m right? It would be for a good cause. The naive, tender heart of a seventeen-year-old boy.”

  “Not a chance. I don’t hang around women I’m not interested in. I don’t flirt with them, and I certainly don’t make love with them.” His voice bordered on annoyed but was laced with a dusky edge that made her mouth dry again. “And besides that, heartbreak is part of life. It sucks, but it makes you stronger. Helps you to see things more clearly . . . at least, after the pain goes away.”

  She wondered if he was talking about the woman named Sage. The one who seemed to have broken his heart. Selena swallowed hard and scrambled to redirect. “And what do you mean when you say ‘a woman who seems to be twice your age’? So maybe that’s an exaggeration, but I’m fifty, Theo. And you can’t be more than thirty, maybe thirty-five at the outside.”

  “I’ve said to you before, I’m not as young as I look.”

  She settled back in her seat and puffed the air from her lips so that it joined the breeze in tousling her bangs. “Like I said . . .”

  He shook his head slowly and kept looking at her. As if he wanted to say something. Finally, he spoke. “I have to ask you something. What happened when you brought me back to life? Exactly? How did you do it?”

  “Well, I . . .” Selena said as she turned a little, arranging herself in the corner of the seat. And while she was adjusting, he reached for her calf and lifted her left leg to settle over his lap, where he once again held her foot.

  She bit her lip. How much should I tell him? “That crystal that I was wearing . . . the other night.”

  “The one that burned? When you were out by the zombies?”

  Selena nodded. “I touched that crystal to your . . . to the eye of the dragon on your back. It’s . . . what is it, anyway? It was metal or something. You gave this big . . . jolt, and sort of shuddered. And then you opened your eyes.”

  “Well, that explains that,” he muttered. “You just touched it to me?”

  “Yes. It was like a spark or something. But what is that thing in you?”

  “Yeah. See, Selena,” he said, settling into his respective corner, too, his knees turned to face her, bumping her right one. “There are a few things you don’t know about me either. I have my own secrets.”

  She waited, expecting him to continue. But he didn’t. Instead, he massaged her big toe with great attention, as if it were the most important thing in the world. A precious jewel or piece of metal that he was rubbing and polishing.

  Theo looked up all of a sudden with a sheepish smile. “I’m getting really turned on doing this,” he said. And he looked at her with eyes that proved his statement.

  “Rubbing my foot?” Selena managed a little chuckle, but it came out more like a husky breath. Those butterflies again . . .

  He laughed a little too. “I know. It’s a bit weird. But I think it stems from this photo spread I saw once, a long time ago, when I was just about Sam’s age. Very impressionable. It was a series of pictures of a couple making love—nude, of course, in most of them. Really tasteful, though, as those sorts of pictures go. But the last photo was one with just her feet showing. Elegant and feminine, with the same sorts of smooth curves as the rest of her body. The nails painted bright red like yours, just sticking out from the white bedsheets. The sheets were all rumpled and messed up, and you knew what had just happened . . . and one foot was straight up, and the other one was cocked to the side. I don’t know. It just . . . got me.”

  It ‘got’ her a little bit, too, listening to him talk that way.

  Their car was just about to the top again, and she felt a sudden rush of breeze as they crested . . . then that flippy, dropping feeling as they started down again. A wonder that she’d been so nervous, when this was such an enjoyable, sensual ride. The sun was nearly gone, and a generous moon had appeared in the southeast. The world was turning from muted color to every shade of blue-gray and mottled with shadow.

  “That little metal thing in my back is what’s called an integrated circuit. Or IC,” he said finally. “It was embedded in my body during . . . during a massive underground explosion.”

  Selena didn’t speak. She just waited for him to continue.

  “It healed in my skin, integrated into my body somehow . . . and it changed me.” He’d stopped rubbing her foot and now simply held it in his warm hands, cupping her heel and the ball of her foot. “I don’t know how or why, but the circuit gave me this ability to produce electrical power at will.”

  She blinked, staring at him. The sun had sunk low enough that she couldn’t really see his features; she couldn’t tell if he was serious, or making a joke. “And . . .?”

  “And, all of a sudden, now that I’ve been resurrected, I seem to have lost the ability. Which, incidentally, I’ve found to be quite handy in the past.”

  She realized she’d pulled away from her corner, interested and tense. Now she settled back in her seat. Ah. So he couldn’t demonstrate this odd thing. Very convenient.

  But why would he lie about something like this? She knew from her own experience that there were inexplicable things in life, and beyond. “It doesn’t seem to bother you that much,” she commented. “Losing that ability.”

  He smiled briefly and gave her foot a little squeeze. “It’s not like losing an arm or a leg,” he replied. “I mean, I’m still fully functional,” he added with a brief sidewise smile. “And it wasn’t something I used all the time, or even every day. It took a lot of effort and energy to bring that power forth and use it . . . and afterward, I was always really weak. I couldn’t hardly stand up. I’m thinking that maybe the charge that came from the crystal and jolted me back to life had the effect of blowing the circuits, so to speak. So the power is gone now . . . but I’m still alive. I’m thinking it was an even exchange.”

  She didn’t really understand everything he was talking about in regards to blowing circuits, so she just nodded.

  “Nothing I can do about it. I can ask why all I want, but I never seem to get an answer,” he said.

  Selena stared at him, something flowering inside her. “I know the feeling.”

  “I don’t know why that happened, or why you were able to bring me back to life. I wish I did. It seems like there must be some reason. But so far, I haven’t figured out what it is.”

  Selena let his words wash over her like the gentle breeze, taking them for their worth. She liked him.
She didn’t want to disbelieve him, or wonder if he was weird. He was different, and she wasn’t certain what he was up to, but she liked him. A lot. And not just because of those broad, square shoulders. She felt comfortable with him. As if he understood things at a deeper level than most people. He was easy to talk to, and he listened. But she still wasn’t ready to tell him everything. She’d loved Brandon; she’d had a child with him . . . and he hadn’t been capable of fully understanding her.

  “I don’t think we ever get the real answer to why anything happens—good or bad,” she said. “Easy or difficult. But we only seem to ask when we don’t like it. When we need to know why someone died, or why this tragedy happened, or why something difficult is required of me.”

  Theo flashed another brief smile. “That’s not completely true. Right now, I’m asking the universe why I got so lucky as to be sitting in a Ferris wheel with you.”

  He shifted in his little space, and the next thing she knew, he was leaning toward her. Releasing her foot so that it was free to drop to the floor, he moved in closer, the beam from a red light touching his forehead. She looked at him, their eyes meeting as he filled her vision and then covered her lips with his.

  Warmth and heat blossomed through her as their mouths touched. Just perfectly. Lips aligning as if molded that way, soft and full and tender. He didn’t touch her, except on a spot near where his hand, planted on the seat beside her for leverage, was resting.

  And then, just as smoothly, he pulled back after that one, simple kiss. The quiet sound of breaking suction punctuated the constant low groan of the wheel’s mechanism. Theo settled back into his corner and looked at her. His hooded eyes were narrow and dark, gleaming where they picked up the light of the moon.

  Selena’s heart was pounding and she wanted to surge back toward him and pick up that kiss . . . but something held her back. The light over him was dim and tinted green now, but she could see the way he held his body: reserved, restrained.

  The wheel brought them down again, and as they rounded the bottom of the circle, it began to slow, the breeze gentling. The upswing, which she somehow understood was the last one, took its time . . . cresting, the lights on the wheel’s spokes casting their multicolored circular glows, then almost sighing as it seemed to waft to a halt at the bottom.

  “This was really nice,” she said. “I enjoyed it. I enjoyed talking to you. I don’t have anyone else . . . to talk to.”

  “It was my pleasure,” he told her, reaching over to unlatch the door. His inked arm brushed hers, warm and solid, reminding her suddenly of the rest of his warm, solid body up against hers.

  As Selena stood, she caught a different view of a patch of lights on the fairies’ wheel and noticed that they were flickering wildly: red and green and yellow, with a couple blue ones. “Zombies don’t like blinking lights like that,” she said . . . and then wondered why she’d been so foolish as to bring up that touchy subject.

  Theo climbed out after her. “I didn’t know that,” he said mildly, and she wondered if she’d be able to escape without going down that conversational path: Why she went out, what she was doing . . . “Are they afraid of it?”

  Selena walked down the ramp, her knees a little wobbly. “It seems to confuse them. I’m going to go back now, Theo,” she said to forestall any more questions. “Thank you.”

  “Selena,” he said, halting her escape. She turned. “You aren’t going to go out tonight, are you?”

  She shook her head. She wasn’t ready. Not yet. Not so soon. “No. I haven’t been out since the other night.”

  “I know.”

  A little shiver tickled her. He’d been watching over her? She wasn’t certain how she felt about that, but she wasn’t really surprised. “You have my word,” she said.

  And then, instead of turning away and walking off as planned, she moved toward him. “Theo,” she said.

  He opened his arms, and she went into them, and their mouths found each other with ease. This kiss was hot and furious, nothing like the little tender buss from on the fairies’ wheel. His fingers plastered all over her back, pulling her up against him like bark on a tree . . . his hands sliding to cup her butt.

  He smelled good and fresh, tasted a little salty on his cheek and jaw. His hair was soft silk beneath her fingers—and when he drew her mouth back to his, their tongues thrust and slid strong and deep. She had her hands on his shoulders, sliding over the bulge of his biceps and the warmth of his skin beneath the sleeves of his shirt. Her foot found his leg and slid up along the muscled calf, ruffling the hair growing there. Yes.

  The world had become a dark, hot one that spun just the right amount. She’d awakened—swelling and dampening; her breasts tight and ready, pressed against his shirt.

  Theo dragged his mouth away, his hands settling at her hips, holding her in place as he stepped back. The lights from the wheel above mottled his face yellow, blue, and red and she could see his lips parted, his eyes dark, and even his chest rising and falling.

  “I’d like to do a lot more than that,” he said in a low voice, his eyes dark and heavy on her. “But I don’t think it’s a good idea. For a while, anyway—or until I can’t stand it anymore,” he added on the gust of a breath, releasing her and stepping away even farther. “Because I think you need to see me as more than a young stud whose body you get to play with.”

  Selena gasped—partly in indignation, and partly because she was out of breath, trying to catch up to this moment. “That’s not—”

  “Really?” He laughed unsteadily. “Not that I mind you playing with my body, or vice versa . . . but you’ve got this whole complex about me and how old I am—or how old I look—and I think you see this as a temporary thing. Maybe it is, but I’m not sure how temporary temporary is. So I decided I’d make myself scarce, do some things around here, maybe get to know you and Sam and Vonnie better so that whatever’s between us isn’t just physical. Because, Selena, I told you the other day . . . I can’t stop thinking about you. And I don’t just mean your body rolling around the sheets with mine. And those things you can do with it.” His smile flashed in the multicolored world. “I have scratches on my back—and believe it or not, they aren’t from the gangas the other night.”

  Now Selena’s face burst hot and she was glad it was too dark for him to see. “I’m sorry.”

  His laugh sounded strained. “No apologies necessary, believe me. I can’t wait to see what you can do after I really get to know you . . . and what you like.”

  Oh God. Her heart was slamming in her chest, and her whole body seemed to suddenly waken. What you like.

  “Okay,” she replied. Dazed. Confused. And absolutely shimmery-kneed. “If that’s what you want.”

  “What I want,” he said, suddenly very serious and very strong, “is for you to trust me enough to talk to me like you did tonight. To let me understand you. And then we can have all sorts of fun.”

  Right. She wasn’t sure that was possible . . . but, she thought when she tripped as she turned away, she was getting closer to being willing to try.

  Chapter 10

  The problem with a cold shower was that the numbing effects only lasted as long as the shower itself did.

  Once a guy got out and his mind went back to the place it had been that caused him to get in the cold shower in the first place, he was screwed. Figuratively, of course.

  Which was why Theo, his hair still dripping chilly water down his bare shoulders, found himself trudging back up the dark flight of stairs to the arcade only an hour after the Ferris wheel ride. At least he could focus on something productive instead of rolling around sleepless in his hospice ward bed.

  Back at the computer, his fingers in their familiar, comforting position on the keyboard, amid the hums of monitors and the whirrs of hard drives, Theo checked his messages.

  Nothing from Lou, but that didn’t surprise him. They’d had a few mind connections during the day.

  Then he watched Brad’s video again.
This time, he concentrated on the environment, the setting behind him. It definitely wasn’t here at Blizek Beach. It looked like a simple office space, or even a hotel room, with plain walls and no furniture.

  He tried to listen for noises in the background, using a sound mixing software to isolate the hum of noise in the background. Although he wasn’t completely sure what difference it would make if he figured out where Brad was. It wasn’t here, and it had been fifty years ago.

  And as he listened to the video one more time, he realized something else. Brad said, “I’m working with truth to collect data . . .”

  Truth?

  Was it possible he meant Remington Truth? One of the masterminds behind the Change?

  If that was the case, then maybe Remington Truth had double-crossed the Cult and that was why they were looking for him. Or at least—

  “Ruuuu-uuuthhhhhh. Ruuu-uuuthh.”

  He glanced outside, looking into the expanse of darkness, and saw the remnants of destruction that still existed fifty years later. Cratered ground, heaved-up earth now covered with grass and trees, and, most telling of all, the shadows and silhouettes of annihilated buildings.

  And then he saw a glint of orange in the distance.

  Instinctively, he looked down at the grounds below, behind the protective gates. And he saw a shadow moving quickly and purposefully from the house. Toward the gates.

  There was no mistaking Selena, nor her intent.

  She’d lied.

  Selena was just approaching the small, side door that led beyond the protective walls when she heard the scuffle of foot on stone behind her. A long shadow fell across the rippling grass, mingling with her own and framed by the moonlight above. She turned, hoping it was Frank but knowing it wasn’t.

  “You said you weren’t going out tonight.”

  “Theo,” Selena replied, scrambling to pull her thoughts together. “What are you doing here?” A stupid question, like bad dialogue from a DVD, but she couldn’t think of anything else to say. Maybe that was why those lines were used in the first place.