I swallowed hard against the icy lump in my throat. “Did they… did they leave anything behind?”
Barbas responded immediately. “Yes.” His next words came out in a whisper, as if he was afraid that speaking them too loud, would make them more real. As if not fully acknowledging them would undo what we had just learned and would put the universe back the way it had been just a few moments ago. The way it was before… “Beneath,” Barbas whispered. “It just says, ‘We Are Beneath.”
Chapter Thirty
Joanna
Even Dead Gods Dream
Sleep was a long time coming. I sat with my back against the ice, beneath an overhanging chunk of the tower, just staring at the archive where I had left it, sitting inert in the fractured ice. It was just a cube of data storage, inert and depowered. It couldn’t hurt me. But I watched it as if it was a viper, as though it was some kind of technological predator waiting to strike that was hidden in the shape of a simple hard-drive. What if whoever had been through our archives- whoever had taken part of Barbas- what if they had left more than a message? What if they had left some kind of trap? What did they want with us? What did they want with Barbas? Images of cables twisting out of the dark to strangle me were mingled with thoughts of many-fingered hands rising from the darkness, tipped in savage claws, already just behind me, already at my throat. I had been attacked on the surface, but as surprising as that had been; it hadn’t really scared me- not really. I fought for my life, and it was frightening in its own way, but it was ultimately explainable. It was concrete. There was nothing especially mysterious about it. But this? This was actually terrifying. It unsettled me, at my very core, and nothing felt safe. How could I feel safe? If there was something else on this planet, capable of accessing my technology, taking my data, and speaking my language, what else were they capable of? What could they want? What could they be doing, right now? I closed my eyes against the mounting headache that was clawing its way up out of the center of my brain. I needed to sleep, but how could I? How could I sleep with something like that out there? Who knew how close it was?
When I opened my eyes again, I was no longer in a broken, icy cavern, and I was no longer encased in armor. I put a hand to my head and felt the familiar waves of cascading black curls sliding through my fingers, and I smiled despite it all. Despite the fear, despite the uncertainty, Barbas was there. Even injured as he was, even diminished by whatever they had taken, he was still looking out for me. I was sitting on the deck of a boat, a sailboat- long enough that it was probably more like a yacht, and it was floating peacefully in an endless blue sea. Unusually gentle sunlight fell down on me, making the smooth wood of the deck warm against my skin. I was wearing a light, slightly translucent sundress, the same color as the bright lime margarita in my upraised hand, and nothing else. I wriggled my toes in the heat of the sun and enjoyed the way the warmth felt on my legs, on my arms, on the part of my chest exposed by the only partially laced neckline. I knew it wasn’t real, I knew I should be alert, ready for anything, ready for-
Barbas stepped into my vision, not looking at me. His lean body was shining with a thin film of sweat as he stood at the edge of the deck and stared out over the water. His body was just as fantastic as usual, taut with tight, well-earned muscle, his shoulders broad and strong. His brown skin seemed to glow in the sun, as if it had absorbed some of the light and were reflecting it back out at the day through the shimmer of sweat. His russet hair had been cut down almost to the skin, on the sides of his head, leaving only a rusty shadow on his skin. But he had let some of the short, wavy hair grow at the top of his head, giving him something of a rugged, military look. His skin wasn’t perfect anymore, either. There were scars scattered across his broad back, places where it seemed he had been burned and cut, long ago. Maybe it was the legacy of his remembered history in the Pan-American soldadesca. After all, it was a part of who he was, just as much as my memories were. And who could say whose memories, whose past was more real? I could no more reach out and touch my old life any more than he could. Did that make him any less of a person? Did that make him any less real?
Barbas didn’t turn when he spoke, still staring out over bright, cheery ocean that stretched out of sight all around us. “I couldn’t make the cabin. There’s too much to manage with the forest, the lake, all of it. Too much of me would have to go into constructing it, and I am still very much diminished from my former self.”
I understood. “So you did the boat so that you wouldn’t have to construct a background more detailed than the surface of the sea.”
Barbas turned, smiling ruefully. “I’m afraid there’s no swimming on the agenda, either. Too much to simulate for it to work. I’m missing a lot of the processes that let me co-opt your subconscious, and without the help of your hind-brain, I can’t put together a whole world like I did before.” He gestured with one hand. “But I can manage a single boat and some margaritas. I figured you needed to relax. You’re afraid, and you feel cornered. You feel way out of your depth, and I don’t think the situation is going to get much better for a while. So I needed to get you somewhere you could breathe easy. Get you out of that suit for a while. Let your body sleep.”
“Aren’t you afraid too?” I asked, the cold wire of tension sliding into my thoughts again. “I mean, that message, the part of you that was taken- doesn’t that scare the shit out of you?” I looked down at the margarita in my hand, smelled the slight edge of tequila over the scent of the lime, and gratefully took a deep swig of the fruity drink. I let the alcoholic burn mingle with the soft tangy sweetness of citrus as it washed down my throat, and closed my eyes for a moment. “It sure scares the shit out of me.”
When I opened my eyes, Barbas was crouching next to me, his eyes level with mine, the thick, sweaty, masculine scent of him thick in my nose. I blinked and did a double take. He only had one eye, still bright and green as ever, reflecting the color of my margarita back at me along with a little inner ring of yellow fire that surrounded the pupil. The other eye was a cybernetic construct, a hard silver sphere, featureless except for a subtle double ring graven in it to suggest an iris and pupil. A scar bisected the eye, continuing down to touch the corner of his mouth, tracking back along his jaw and out of sight. “... ‘Bas?” I whispered softly, setting down my drink and reaching up to cup his scarred cheek. “What is this? These scars…”
Barbas bent and kissed me gently, slowly, the taste of him heady as wine, sweet as honey, strong as whiskey. He broke the kiss after a long minute and grinned with the unscarred side of his face. “I am… diminished, Jo. I was wounded in the battle. This is how I appear now. It more accurately reflects who I currently am.” He stood, wincing a little, and I realized that his right leg was missing below the knee, replaced instead with cunning prosthetic, a mechanical limb that looked and acted so much like the real thing. It was difficult to spot unless you looked right at it. I looked him over again, and the scars seemed to stand out again to me, each of them a strangely geometric, angular pattern, like the tracery of circuits on a silicon chip. They looked starker, more obvious, clashing with the bright festive Hawaiian pattern splashed over the shorts that were his only clothing. He watched me, carefully, waiting for my reaction.
I grinned at him and raised an eyebrow in an appraising look. “You look badass, ‘Bas and you know it. You probably also know I like a man that has been a little dirtied up, seen his share of the shit.” I searched his face. “But I don’t think that your injuries or my preferences are all this is about.” I ran my fingers along his stubbly cheek. “Am I wrong?”
Barbas sighed and sat down next to me. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that you can read me like that.”
“Not really,” I acknowledged. “You live in my head. We spend nearly every moment together. I think I know you pretty well.” Barbas turned his head to look out over the water again. I reached over and turned his face back to me with gentle fingers. “This is about Volistad, isn’t it?”
<
br /> Barbas didn’t say anything at first, he just watched me with his mismatched eyes, his lips tight, and as if he was holding in words he wasn’t sure he wanted to say. He eventually spoke, hesitantly. “Maybe a little,” he admitted. “This is partially because of the damage to my personality matrix. I’m not lying about that. It makes it easier to see everything as real if what I look like better reflects how I feel, and I don’t feel whole. There are big parts of me missing, gone, and I don’t know where they are.” He looked down at the warm wooden deck between his knees. “But yes, part of this is probably about Volistad.” He sighed. “He’ has been on your mind a lot.”
“And that bothers you?” I asked, trying to keep the little flickers of a smile off of my face. “I mean, you live in my mind, and you can read some of my thoughts. So you must know why he’s on my mind.”
“He’s interesting,” Barbas admitted, a little glumly. “He’s a warrior; he’s clearly dangerous but clearly just as intelligent. He’s like what would happen if someone made some kind of arctic lynx into a person, or maybe a saber-toothed cat.”
“Yeah, he’s pretty intriguing,” I said, shrugging. “And even attractive, in a sort of exotic way. But he’s also not a human, and, more importantly, he’s dead.” A little ice crept into my voice when I said the word ‘dead’, and I found a surprising amount of anger hiding, deep within my chest. I didn’t know it was there. “At least that fucking Stormcaller thought so.” I gave Barbas a very direct look, which carried more than a little of that deep, swelling rage with it. “So it’s not like he’s a threat to you, even if I could leave the suit.”
Barbas winced. “I didn’t mean it like that.” He sighed. “Forget it. It’s stupid anyway. I should just let you relax, and get some sleep.” He moved as if to stand, but I reached up and seized his shoulder, and pulled him back down.
He hit the deck a little harder than I had intended, and he let out a little ‘oof’. “Oh, no,” I said, and this time, I knew the smile on my face was the tigress, not the shy little ward of the Pan-American state they had named Joanna Angeles. “You don’t get away that easily.” I seized his chin in my hand and pulled him close with easy strength. I might not have really been that strong without the suit in real life, but here? This was my head. Which meant my rules. I looked him right in the eyes and took a deep breath, smelling him; his sweat, his arousal, that bitter tang that I knew was fear. I spoke directly into his face, my breath hot where it reflected back to touch my lips. “You live in my head. You’re exactly what I want, by someone’s design- which, believe it or not, I really do appreciate. I’ve been alone before, really, really alone, and I learned a long time ago to take what I could get.” One of my fingers touched a vein running up the side of his neck, and I could feel his pulse beneath it. His heart was beating hard and fast. I smiled more widely. I liked that. “And if someone had told me about you before I was launched out into space, you would still be so much better than I could possibly have expected. You’re my friend, probably the best I’ve ever had, and I don’t care that you’re an AI, or a djinni, or whatever you technically are.” The smile dropped off my face, as suddenly as it came, and I put my lips to his ear, speaking through bared teeth. “But listen very, very carefully, Qarin,” I spoke the next words sharply, each one its own sentence. “You. Do. Not. Own. Me.” Then I released him, and sat back, letting the soft, easy smile of shy little Joanna Angeles return to my lips, letting the tigress fade back into the dark places, the shadows of my mind. I picked up my margarita and took a sip. “Understand?”
Barbas just stared at me for a long moment, breathing hard. “Yeah,” he said, a little dazed. “Yeah, I understand.” Then he leaned forward and kissed me, hard, moving to press me back against the warm wood of the deck. I let him. I wanted him as much as I had the first time I met him, maybe more so. He kissed me, and I kissed back, harder, tasting him. With some calm corner of my mind, I remembered to set down my margarita before I reached up and wrapped my arms around him, pulling him down.
I bit gently at Barbas’ lips as his hands roamed up along my sides to my neckline, his fingers teasing aside the already loose lacing. My body responded to him with eager intensity, and a small cry escaped my lips as a lightning bolt of sensation made its way up from between my legs and twisted up through my body. His lips closed on one of my breasts and his tongue traced quick circles around the nipple. But I didn’t simply surrender to the growing current of pleasure gripping me. Instead, I dipped my head and bit down on the side of his muscular neck, none too gently. He convulsed, letting go of my breast as he groaned. He looked up, his eyes wide, staring at me in shock. I smiled, and taking advantage of his surprise, I hooked one leg behind his and rolled us both over so that I came up on top. One of his hands was still tangled in the neck of my dress, and my sudden movement caused him to tear the thin fabric, ripping it down and leaving me naked to the waist.
I bent low over him, dragging my breasts lightly across his chest, our faces framed by the midnight tumble of my hair. Barbas nipped at of my breasts, both in turn, one of his hands coming up and taking a handful of my curling locks in his fist. I reached back and ran a hand over his thin shorts, feeling how hard he was, how much he wanted me. He groaned again, and his other hand slid down between my legs. I slipped my hand and took a hold of him, and we tortured each other, each of us teasing little rising bursts of pleasure out of the other before the pace of our movements dropped into agonizing, tantalizing slowness. He was warm in my hand, his fingers warm and slick inside me, and for a moment I just basked in the radiating heat of our desire. He wanted me, wanted me so badly, and I could feel that desperation in every stroke of his fingers, every spasm of his hips, as we crawled closer and closer to climax.
Both of us lost all control at the same time. Barbas withdrew his fingers from me and let go of my hair so that he could get those ridiculous shorts out of his way. I planted with one hand on his chest, and with the other, I tore the ruined dress off of me completely, flinging it off to the side. He gripped my hips hard, and I dug my nails into his muscled chest, both of us sucking in deep, shuddering breaths as he pushed into me. I was more than ready for him, and I arched my back into a bow, forcing my hips all the way down onto him so that he was driven deep inside of me. We writhed together in frantic urgency; my nails leaving trails of red from his pectorals down to his abs, his strong hands clamped hard over my waist.
We raced to the peak of the mountain of our desire, all our restraint thrown overboard into the dark ocean, and our mingled voices rang out over the still waters. When he climaxed, it was in a sudden wracking surge, and his fingers dug painfully into my hips as he spent himself inside me. A shout ripped its way out of his throat, and he suddenly relaxed beneath me. But I wasn’t done. I rocked my hips and rode his exhausted body, forcing him into me over and over again until finally he pushed me over the edge. I screamed as the orgasm blasted through me, writhing atop him until every last delicious spark of sensation burned its way through me. I slipped off of him and collapsed to the warm deck, panting and staring sightlessly up into the picturesque sky.
We lay there, content, curled together, and watched the sun dip down to the horizon as the sky gradually shaded from blue to violet and red. “Thank you,” Barbas whispered, “for coming to find me.”
“You said it yourself,” I said, chuckling. “Without you, I would probably go insane out here, and quickly.”
Barbas ran a hand lightly over my bare leg, and I shivered. “I’m not so sure of that, Jo. Sure, you need to see- and feel- another human sometimes, but besides that I’m not so sure that you need me as much as I need you.”
I nuzzled my face into his shoulder, and then kissed him lightly on the cheek. “I need you plenty, ‘Bas,” I murmured in his ear. “If you hadn’t been here, I wouldn’t have made it out of that attack alive, and even before that, there’s no way I would have been able to set everything up we needed to survive that first storm. This job really would be
impossible alone. I’m glad they sent you.” I traced my hand down and took a hold of him again. “Besides, the sex is really good.” He laughed, though the sound caught in his throat as I moved my hand.
We were just starting again when we heard it, a deep thrumming sound from out in the gathering dark, a deep, atonal bellow emanating from the waters like the song of some colossal monster whale. We froze, the giggling, teasing atmosphere of a moment before evaporated in an instant. “Barbas? Are you doing this?” But his eyes were just as wide as mine as he wordlessly shook his head. We got to our feet, shakily, and I was suddenly very aware of my nakedness. The strange call repeated, and goosebumps rippled all across my body as a cold wind hissed across the deck of the boat in a bitter salt spray, carrying with it a foul, rotten, sulfurous stink. The boat began to rock beneath my feet, and I stumbled, clinging to Barbas’ shoulder for support. We couldn’t see what was out in the dark, the sun was long gone. I could hear waves beginning to roil around us. What was happening? “Barbas!” I shouted, over the rising howl of the wind. “We need light! Bring back the sun!”
The stench of the bucking sea made me gag, and I dropped to my knees, unable to stand anymore from the motion of the boat. A moment later, Barbas cursed. “Dammit, I can’t do anything to the weather. The sun won’t come up. I’m no longer controlling the dream!”
“The boat!” I hissed, desperately. “Does this thing have lights?”
“It should!”
“Good, let's go!” We made our way across the tossing deck to the pilothouse, wrenching the door open and scrambling inside just as a brackish, sizzling rain began to come down on the boat in sheets. Green-white lightning lit the sky in flashbulb brilliance, and all I could see around us were great mounds of storm clouds, the ocean thrashing all around us in the grip of a terrible gale. The black water wasn’t just tossing us around randomly, however. Our boat was caught in a great twisting spiral, drawn towards a great dark hole in the water with inexorable force.
Volistad: Paranormal Sci-Fi Alien Romance (Alien Mates Book 3) Page 17
