reflection 02 - the reflective cause

by Tamara Rose Blodgett

  Beth instantly looks at where the tree's crotch would be if it were humanoid.

  Maddie lets loose a hysterical giggle.

  “Ah…” Jacky starts, experiencing a rare speechless pause.

  “Our reproductive organs do not manifest except when mating.”

  “TMI. Tree humping.” His hands massage his temples. “Damn.” He turns to Beth. “He's all yours.”

  Of course he is.

  “Okay, blood then.”

  Jacky puts his hand on her arm, his hazel eyes swimming in conviction. “How do you know woody here's gonna keep his part of the bargain?”

  Their gazes lock. “I don't.” She gently extracts herself from his grip and walks toward the enchanted tree.

  “Where is the rest of your kind?” Beth asks, stalling the inevitable, trying to skate around her nervousness through conversation.

  “Everywhere.” The limbs that were so still spread wide. “We are in every sector.”

  Beth’s eyes sweep the depth of the forest, and dozens of eyes blink open to look down at her.

  She quiets her trembling through sheer will alone.

  When a branch touches her arm tentatively, the feather-light caress is as insidiously eerie as it is reverent.

  Beth inhales oxygen laced with her own fear.

  Thorns burst from the wood, piercing her forearm. Beth gasps, instinctively jerking away, and the barbs set hard.

  The burn is incredible, as though instead of taking blood, the tree being is giving some of its life force to her.

  Fire whips through her veins, scorching a pathway to her heart.

  Beth opens her eyes. Her blood mingles with the emerald of the forest floor that feeds the tree creatures. The shimmering colors pulse red and green then turn a brilliant violet. Like liquid fire, it races to the tree creature's heart. A burst of light changes the bark to deeply riveted opaque jewels.

  “Our true form.”

  Leaves rustle.

  “Beautiful,” Maddie whispers.

  “Let her go, tree dude. Right now.”

  “Just… one more pull.”

  Beth's body is a husk, and she falls where she stands. A second limb scoops her up, gently laying her on her back.

  She stares up at the trees, who look down at her. Many eyes blink back at her.

  The thorns retract from her body. The ground flashes around her as what Beth gave the tree is flung to the trunks of the others. Their pulsing colors are dizzyingly bright in the depths of the wood.

  “Our essence will remain in you, offering you protection until you leave this sector.”

  Beth tries to speak—but can't.

  She's so thirsty, she can't think of anything else. “What—” She swallows. “How long?”

  The tree bends at what appears to be a natural waist, coming so close that Beth can smell the rich loam of his breath.

  Those eyelashes, so small and lacy from his upright height, fall like palm fronds to cover Beth's body. She doesn't have the strength to shy away.

  Cold wisps of leafy material glide across her arms.

  “You will know our forests for the rest of your life, Beth Jasper. In every sector you jump to, there will be those of the Tree.”

  Beth's eyes go round and her lips part, but the tree is already rising. “You will know us, and we shall know you.”

  Jacky and Maddie cautiously move forward.

  Beth struggles even with their help. She sways as she stands.

  The sun hovers. Somehow nighttime is near—two hours have come and gone.

  “Oh no,” Beth says softly.

  The trees rustle, and Beth's chin lifts.

  The tree’s eyes catch hers. “Go now. Your gift of blood will be used wisely.”

  Yips, snuffles, and barks float on the wind. The nightlopers are rising for the night.

  “Beth!” Maddie chokes.

  “Go,” the tree hisses, turning to face the sounds.

  Beth doesn't have to be told twice. She's still lethargic, but she doesn't have to be strong to jump. She's never had to be.

  “The lake,” Beth manages from between the two of them. “Run!”

  But Maddie's frozen like a statue, her eyes glued on whatever pursues them.

  Maddie's face rocks back with the force of Beth's slap.

  “Now,” Beth demands with quiet authority.

  Maddie blinks, crocodile tears filling her eyes.

  But they don't fall.

  The trio runs. Beth brings up the rear as the two Threes sprint toward the water, which sparkles like a sea of fresh blood in the dying sun.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Merrick

  Merrick doesn't waste time on self-recrimination. He should never have trusted the Bloodling. He went against his instincts, gambling on Slade’s history of protecting Beth.

  That's exactly it. Beth. Slade was protecting Beth—and ridding himself of me.

  Now they have Jeb locked down.

  Ryan obviously is in charge of Jeb's immediate fate. He made sure there wasn't one speck of a reflective surface, organism, or material worthy of even a skipping hop in the all-stone prison Jeb finds himself in.

  He is shackled against a wall naked of anything but the bindings and stone. He tests the bindings with a jerk, and nothing gives. He licks his chapped lips and winces. They're cut and scabbed, like the rest of his body.

  His powers of rejuvenation have already kicked in, but without fuel in the form of food—he can heal only at half-speed.

  His mind aches for Beth, his other half. Familiar wrenching anxiety fills him.

  Fucking Slade.

  Speak of the demon… In walks Slade. The Bloodling fills the jagged stone opening. The corners of the doorway have been softened by time and wear. He folds his arms and stares at Jeb.

  “Come to gloat, Bloodling?” Jeb manages, despite his parched throat.

  “No. I've come to relieve your mind.”

  Jeb tries to laugh but only accomplishes a hoarse cough.

  Slade moves forward, and Jeb tenses, though he knows he can't defend himself.

  “I will not harm an injured, bound male,” Slade says with clear insult in his voice.

  Jeb says nothing, choosing a glare as his answer.

  Slade moves in closer, and Jeb readies himself for abuse. Then a cup touches his lips.

  “Poison?” Jeb asks without reproach.

  Slade smirks. “Just water, Reflective.”

  “Why?”

  Slade's eyes shift away, and he speaks to the window cut in the stone, where ceramic-coated dulled metal bars bisect the opening. “I am not without mercy.”

  “Right.” But Jeb gulps the offered water. Cool relief sings through his system like a balm. He wets his lips. “Where's Rachett?”

  Slade's face goes blank.

  Instantly, Jeb intuits that the answer is terrible.

  “Tell me,” Jeb says, clenching his teeth.

  Stepping away, Slade doesn't meet Jeb's gaze. “He cannot be saved.”

  What has Ryan done?

  “He has been given to the nightlopers.”

  Jeb shuts his eyes, trying to keep raw defeat at bay. If he kept them open, there would be no way to hide the emotion from Slade.

  He would see it all. Jeb's hate and his love—all of it.

  Slade doesn't deserve the knowledge.

  *

  Gunnar

  Gunnar lowers his head and charges into the enchanted forest. Many years have passed since he’s entered this forest. He does not make the choice lightly.

  However, safe passage to the lake is his—for a price.

  And his daughter and kindred blood have gone this way. Their fragrance permeates the air.

  Gunnar races ahead, the nightlopers closing in behind him.

  The trees awaken, and their many eyes follow his progress as he tears through the underbrush.

  “Blood passage!” Gunnar bellows. He sails into the air, arms raised toward the heavens.


  Immediately, branches wrap him, lifting him off the ground and piercing his forearms as his feet leave the forest floor.

  Gunnar sets his teeth against the pain, and his fangs punch out of his gums in response to what his body deems as an attack. Venom drips as barbs bite inside his flesh.

  “Gunnar,” the trees course together in instant recognition. They have tasted him before.

  Then the pulling begins.

  “Safe passage,” he whispers as the pulse of blood leaving his body electrifies his system with their essence exchange.

  “Safe passage,” their feminine voices reply as one.

  Seconds pass, and Gunnar opens his eyes.

  “Enough!” he bellows. They get only a taste, not a bloodletting.

  They drop him, and he rolls expertly to a standing position, orienting himself again.

  He tenses, catching sight of Nightlopers flying through the air, long arms poised to take him down, talons extended like deadly knives of bone.

  The tree nearest to Gunnar casually bats the closest golden nightloper, hurling it into another. Both are tossed to the forest's edge, where they smash against the trunk of a mundane tree.

  Gunnar grabs the next nightloper and sinks his fangs into whatever body part is nearest.

  Blood pours into his mouth, and Gunnar tears out his victim’s jugular. He tosses aside the esophagus with a jerk of his head. It falls against the base of an enchanted tree like a discarded slick worm. Gunnar falls against the nightloper, sucking the blood from the rest of its body until its skin shrivels.

  He whirls, ready to take on more, but the enchanted trees release themselves from the bed of the forest, moving with steps that pierce and shovel out the ground as they walk toward the incoming nightlopers.

  Gunnar changes direction and races for the border of the forest. He throws his arms wide, and a tree catches him and heaves him to the next as though he is the baton in a relay race.

  Gunnar's stomach rolls with nightloper blood and the essence of enchantment as his body swings from one tree to the next.

  He has no time to contemplate, for the last tree throws him out of the woods, and Gunnar lands smoothly in a center glade just as the largest of One’s two suns sets behind the mountains.

  He bounds to his feet, and his chin snaps in the direction of the scent of his blood.

  It does not matter that Beth eschews his protection. She is his daughter, and she shall have it, consent or no. It is his gift to her mother and to himself.

  Gunnar does not bother to glance over his shoulder as he races toward them.

  But his eyes meet Madeline’s when she turns as though sensing his presence.

  He smiles his assurance, yet she does not return it. Instead, she runs to the lake, the edge of which shines in constant invitation to the ones who can jump.

  Jump if you will, my little hopper—I shall follow.

  *

  Beth

  “Jasper!” Jacky screams, and Beth whirls to look at what has followed them.

  Principle help me.

  Gunnar is hot on their trail, but the scene behind him causes her heart to skip a beat.

  Enchanted trees toss nightlopers like puppets whose strings have been severed, flinging them up so high in the darkening sky that entrails, blood, sinew, and the finer points of their bodies split like spoiled fruit when they land.

  Maddie mewls in open fear behind Beth.

  Principle. “Jacky,” Beth says.

  His eyes go wide at a sky raining nightloper bodies, but he answers with a steady voice. “Yeah.”

  “Get Maddie to the lake.”

  The need to reflect itches along Beth's nape.

  Jacky's eyes flick to hers. “What about you?”

  A high, keening of alarm pierces the air, and the fine hairs on Beth's body rise.

  Numbers—they're calling to more nightlopers to descend.

  A wave of longing for Jeb overwhelms Beth as her father races toward her.

  “Go!” Beth bellows. Her eyes mark his progress as Jacky moves toward the shore.

  Gunnar is almost to her when Beth sees the wounds like pockmark scars littering his arms.

  Safe passage.

  She ignores his encroachment, and the instant Jacky is shin-deep in the undulating water, Beth latches on to the reflection of the crescent of one of three moons in One's starlit sky.

  She blinks, and only a soft splash signals her arrival beside Jacky.

  “Holy Shee-it!” Jacky shrieks, and Maddie yelps.

  “We need to go.”

  Gunnar snatches Beth’s wrist.

  Principle, he's fast. Beth narrows her eyes. “Don't make me hurt you.”

  Nightlopers howl.

  They're close.

  Gunnar’s eyes snap to hers. “Do your worst, daughter of mine.”

  “Don't hurt him,” Maddie begs.

  “Oh, God,” Jacky moans.

  Gunnar smirks, seemingly unconcerned as enemies encroach from all corners.

  Beth glowers.

  The first nightloper hits the water. Its roar fills her eardrums.

  “Them or me,” Gunnar asks, his hold tightening on her wrist bones. Visions of jabbing, striking, and maiming him shatters her resolve.

  She exhales in disgust as water splashes so close that the chilly droplets land on her.

  Beth lets her eyes fill with the vision of moonlit water between herself and the thrashing nightloper.

  Her gaze captures the shining image of the four of them and flings them all through the reflection with ease. Heat kisses Beth's body like a whip of scorching flame.

  Fire and ice assail her everywhere, but Beth is Reflective and made to travel this path. The call of the enchanted forest of Three grows louder, and their war song on One dies away.

  Involuntarily, Beth sends them to the magic forest closest to Maddie and Jacky's original quadrant.

  Without a locator for return. Without her partner. And without more than the vaguest plan.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Slade

  Slade walks out of the cell feeling somehow less for his interaction with Merrick. Merrick still rubs him the wrong way. But as they say on Three: keep your eye on the prize.

  Beth is more than a prize—she is his kindred blood. Her blood calls to him like a song. The sweet sounds she made as he gave her pleasure are locked inside his head to replay.

  But memories of her pleasure are insufficient.

  He wants to live them with her.

  Slade strides to the end of the holding-cell block and takes the wide stone steps three at a time. Footsteps of the thousands who’ve come before him have scooped the stone out in the middle.

  Dimitri and Ryan glance up as he swings open the solid wood door into a cavernous room perhaps once used as a great commons before the nightlopers’ slaying of the original inhabitants. Now it is a place of holding, war, and nefarious pursuits.

  “You have reneged on your word, Bloodling.”

  He must tread carefully. Instead portraying his defensiveness, Slade knots his hands behind his back in contemplative false leisure. “Yes, of a sort.”

  Dimitri strides to Slade, who maintains his casual posture. Dimitri will not see Slade sweat. And certainly, the corrupt Reflective will not.

  “Speak or be at the ready to watch the remainder of your females succumb to whatever my regiment can devise.”

  Rape, torture, and maiming before a certain death.

  Bloodlings are not apt to perspire. But a fine sheen of sweat slicks his palms. He loosens his hands and rests them with deliberate informality on his hips. He plants his feet wide apart and folds his arms. Slade's fangs throb for release, for bloodshed.

  Dimitri cocks his head. “I await an answer.”

  “Beth Jasper is at the Bloodling compound.”

  “LaRue?”

  Slade nods. LaRue is the largest of the Bloodling forests. His sire’s carefully cultivated prime defensible position is the lushest and the oldest
forest on One.

  Ryan does not even flinch. Slade will give the Reflectives their nod for the fortitude that runs in their veins. How Beth survived an upbringing alongside the likes of Lance Ryan is a constant enigma to Slade.

  She will not need to survive this male any longer.

  Slade watches the nightlopers, “drones” as he likes to think of them, slowly circle the three of them like dying flies.

  “Back off,” Slade says with a guttural command.

  Dimitri raises his palm. “There is no need for threats. I cannot fathom why you did not bring the female hopper, but it is not of consequence.”

  Slade frowns. “Oh?”

  Ryan smirks, and Slade's guts perform a slow acrobatic flip.

  “I have sent my kind to see her here. An escort, if you will.”

  Slade's heart beat gallops, and his fangs pierce the inside of his lower lip. Slade thought Ryan had lied to work Merrick into a lather before his imprisonment.

  Dimitri studies his face. “Did you presume that I was unaware of your design?”

  Yes, I did. Slade behaved as though she was important only as a means to access Papilio and bring down the mighty Cause.

  Dimitri shakes his head in feigned sadness. His mane shines like spun gold, catching the artificial lights inside the compound. He lifts a finger. “No.” He shakes his mane back and forth. “I am very aware. You spilled much blood, Slade.”

  “Enough to determine a few fun facts,” Ryan interjects for the first time, a smug smile rounding his lips.

  Slade purposely slows his breathing into calmness, feeling the bulge of something important in the pocket of his loose pants.

  His contingency plan, however horrible to consider, might be the only thing left.

  A nightloper, beaten and bloody, bursts through the door and throws itself at Dimitri's feet. The huge nightloper stills then asks, “Where is the female hopper?”

  Slade backs away as Ryan advances toward him.

  “She has jumped, my lord.”

  Slade flinches in surprise.

  Ryan laughs at Slade's expression.

  “And you are worthless, Bloodling. You can't jump a puddle, find her tailwind? Nothing?” he muses.

  Ryan had promised Slade the opportunity to kill Dimitri in exchange for delivering Merrick. There had been no mention of Beth.