In the next instant, Seth popped his elbow, shoulder, and wrist out of joint, his arm slithering from the Captain’s grasp. The older man looked profoundly surprised as Seth lurched up underneath him, knocking him forward onto his hands and knees.
“Seth, no!” Kira yelled.
Not seeming to hear her, Seth leaped onto the Captain’s back and grabbed him in a headlock. Choking, face turning purple, the Captain tried to shake Seth off. Seth pulled his arm tighter, digging his knee into the small of the Captain’s back, his own contorted face turning red with anger and exertion.
“Seth, stop!” Kira shouted, jumping off the bed and hurrying toward the grappling pair. “He’s trying to help us, stop!”
Her words finally seemed to clear the angry haze clouding his mind. He released the Captain’s neck and sprang back a few yards, catlike. He stood in a tense half-crouch, as if waiting for the other man to retaliate.
“Captain, are you all right?” Kira asked.
Gasping, the older man nodded and sat up on his knees. He rubbed at his throat and stared back at Seth.
“That was some move you pulled,” the Captain coughed. “Your joints must be half rubber.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Seth replied belligerently. “Ask Kira; she knows that kind of stuff.”
Kira went to Seth and touched his bruised face. “What’s gotten into you? I’ve never seen you like this.”
Seth’s rage seemed to evaporate when Kira touched him. He smiled at her, still looking a touch unhinged, and took her hand in his and kissed her palm.
“What’s gotten into me is — I’m not going back there. No. Not after today and yesterday.” He swallowed nervously. “I saw this guy was alone, and had cash, and I thought we could take his money and clothes and get out of here.”
“Seth, he told me he’d help us.”
“Help us?” Seth laughed bitterly. “Kira, he’s a normal. They’ll never help people like us. He’s just a rich guy playing with your head.”
“No, it’s not like that,” Kira said. “I believe what he’s told me.”
“I told her,” the Captain said, “that I’d help the two of you get off the station. If I think you love her.”
Seth turned a cold gaze on the Captain. “The fact that you’re alive right now should be proof enough. I wouldn’t have stopped if I didn’t love her.” He hugged Kira close, wrapping his arms around her protectively. “She’s the only woman I’ve ever loved, and right now, she’s the only person I don’t hate in this entire damned universe.”
The Captain stared at the couple for several moments, thoughtfully chewing on his lip. “I believe you. Let me contact my crew, and you’ll be off this station within the hour.”
“Wait,” Seth said. “What’s the catch? You can’t be doing this out of the goodness of your heart.”
“There’s no catch,” the Captain replied. “I’m doing this to repay a debt I owe to an old love.”
“Bullsh—” Seth began.
“Seth, stop it,” Kira said, gently grabbing his chin and forcing him to look down at her. “I believe him. If you can’t trust him, then trust me.”
“All right,” Seth said, relaxing. “All right.”
***
A young, dark-skinned woman with close-cropped green hair stepped into the Captain’s hotel room carrying plain clothes for Kira and Seth. She looked at the couple doubtfully, then approached the Captain.
“Are you sure about this?” she asked.
“Yes, I’m quite sure,” he replied. “Did you find the lock decoder, Loren?”
“Yeah.” She pulled a small, oval device out of the front thigh pocket of her fatigues. “How long are they going to be on the ship? Are they gonna be, like, crew? And if they’re gonna be crew, do they know how to do anything besides fuck?”
Kira felt Seth stiffen in indignation, and she put a hand on his knee to calm him. “I’m sure you’ll find we have many talents that can be of use onboard a mercenary vessel. We’re fast learners.”
“Indeed,” the Captain agreed. “A few judo lessons and this lad will be quite dangerous. Get those tracking devices off them, please. And scan them for microchips. Did you see any watchers?”
Loren nodded. “Couple of ugly guys in brown suits hanging out on a couch in the lobby.”
“Then we’ll be taking the maintenance corridor back to the dock…”
***
Kira held Seth’s hand as the ship’s medic, a thin redhead named Susan, ran an ultrasound wand over Seth’s penis. The artificial gravity on the Captain’s ship, the Petrograd, was only a quarter what it was on the station. Kira felt a little dizzy, and she hoped she wouldn’t get spacesick.
“This feels really weird,” Seth told the medic.
“I’m liquefying the cartilage,” she explained. “I’ll put a nerve block on you once this part’s done, and then I’ll extract the cartilage with a needle. And then—” she paused to lift his flaccid member and run the wand across its underside “— I’ll give you a couple of seconds under the soft tissue growth stimulator, and you should be good as new. Cartilage tends not to grow back without encouragement, so we shouldn’t need to do this again.”
Kira watched as the rings that had kept them from truly consummating their love melted beneath Seth’s skin. When the medic was finished, Kira thanked her, helped Seth get dressed, and walked with him back to their cabin.
They crawled into the big padded sleep sack on their double bunk and snuggled down for the night. Seth slipped an arm around Kira and kissed her cheek. He seemed more relaxed than she’d seen him in months, much more like his old self. He slid his other hand across her smooth belly, drawing soft tickling circles on her skin with his fingertips.
“I can’t believe this has really happened,” he said. “I can’t believe we’re free.”
“Yeah,” she said, snuggling closer to him and smiling into the darkness. “But I keep thinking about something…the Captain said he’s met my model on a dozen stations. I wonder…I wonder if all the mes are in love with all the yous?”
“Hmm. I knew I wanted you the moment I saw you, and I can’t imagine feeling any differently.” Seth paused. “So, I guess if all the yous have actually met the mes, then there’s a whole lot of people out there who ought to get freed from slavery, don’t you think?”
His suggestion sparked her imagination. Why stop at just our models? she thought. Once we’ve learned what the Captain Zorleski can to teach us, we could get everyone out. Station by station…
“Viva la revolucion,” she whispered. “But first, I think we out to try your new toy out. You know, just to make sure everything’s working.”
Seth had gone hard against her thigh. “Oh, I think it’ll work just fine.”
“That’s good,” she said. “Because I’ve got a couple of orgasms in me that are in serious need of liberation…”
Flesh and Blood
MIKE INHALED sharply as the first drop of hot candle wax hit his chest. His eyes strained against the darkness imposed by Olivia’s silken blindfold, arms strained against the leather thongs binding him to the bedposts. He could hear the faint hiss of the candle’s flame, nearly drowned out by the rustle of Olivia slithering across the satin sheets. And by the beating of their slave’s heart, so agonizingly slow now that he was sure the girl had lapsed into a coma.
If he’d undergone this delicious torture only a year earlier, he would have been sheened in sweat, shivering like a mouse. But now his skin was cool and dry as a snake’s, his dead heart steady, a cold flesh clockwork.
The second candledrip seared onto his lower belly, alarmingly close to parts he didn’t want burned, and he reflexively tried to cover himself. The leather ripped, and suddenly his hands were free.
“Oops. Sorry,” he mumbled.
Olivia sighed. “Michael, will you never learn to be still?”
He pulled off the blindfold and blinked at her in the candlelight. “We could try regular handcuffs next time.�
�
“And have you ruin the finish? I think not.”
She caressed the dark bedpost. Mike remembered her telling him that she’d had the bed since 1850. It had been part of the dowry she’d brought with her from England, and it was only piece of furniture she’d been able to rescue from her then-husband’s estate before Sherman’s troops burned Atlanta. He wondered how many thousands of lovers she’d entertained on it since.
“You’re so strong, Michael, even for one of us.” She lay down beside him, her long white hair tickling his shoulder, and ran her hand across his broad chest. “Are you like Samson? If I cut off those lovely dark locks of yours, will you be weak for me?”
He smiled grimly. “I don’t think my hair has much to do with it.”
He’d known real weakness: multiple sclerosis. It first struck him when he was twenty. He was at the gym, on the bench press doing an easy warm-up set of a hundred pounds, when suddenly his arms went weak and numb and the bar crashed to his chest. The spotter who heaved the bar off him to help him up had to call a cab because Mike’s hands were too numb to pick up his car keys.
He had a cousin in Toronto who had MS; she’d been wheelchair-bound since she was thirty-five. She couldn’t even pee without help. The doctors insisted that Mike’s illness wasn’t likely to get that bad, since he almost fully recovered from the first episode less than a month after it happened. But the specter of living his life in a chair drove him wild. He started spending all his money on women, parties and trips, trying to cram as much living into his existence as possible while he searched for something, anything, that would cure him.
Two years later, he’d blundered into the Outland in a drunken haze, and woke up the next morning in Olivia’s bed, a pint lighter. While he never told her of his disease, she could apparently smell his desperation in his sweat. Her offer of eternal life had been tempting, but it was the implication of eternal strength that had swayed him.
“Barbarian. You have no sense of the romantic.” Olivia sat up, and picked up the scarred arm of their unconscious slave. “Care for another drink?”
Mike looked at the teenager, who went by the name Onyx; he thought her real name was Betty Lou or something. She was one of the dozens of little girls who hung out at the Outland, hoping to get the attention of one of the members of Olivia’s circle. Most of them were underage, getting into the club by way of fake IDs or blow jobs for the bouncers. The unlucky ones simply clustered near the front door, trading stories and clove cigarettes until the cops busted them for breaking curfew.
Onyx had been plump and comparatively healthy-looking only a few months before when Olivia had picked her up, but now her ribs stood out in plain relief, her skin so thin and pale her whole body was traced in a webwork of blue veins. Her small breasts rose and fell with every shallow breath, silver barbells glinting in her pink nipples. Her neck and wrists were crusted with dried blood.
He shook his head. “I don’t think we should take any more from her tonight.”
Olivia laughed. “What does it matter? There are dozens of these little tarts for us. This one’s a runaway; nobody will miss her.”
“I’d miss her. She’s a good little dancer.”
“Hmph. I see you haven’t got any sense of value, either.” Still, she put down the girl’s arm.
He made a mental note to take the girl out for a decent meal once Olivia was occupied with somebody else.
Suddenly, there was a rap on the door.
“Phone call for Michael,” Adrian announced.
“I told you not to bother us. Whoever it is, send them away,” Olivia replied, frowning in irritation.
“I tried, but she keeps calling back. Some girl named Julie. Says it’s an emergency.”
Olivia fixed Mike with a cold purple stare, her enormous pupils contracting to pinpoints. “A mundane girl? Calling here?”
“Look, I don’t know how she got this number; I sure didn’t give it to her.” He rolled off the bed and dug his jeans out of the pile of discarded clothing on the floor. “She’s just a girl I went out with for a while last year before you initiated me. Whatever this is about, I’ll take care of it.”
“Make sure she never calls back.”
He dressed and went up through the maze of concrete corridors and steel stairs that led up to the Outland’s business office. The building dated from the early 1900’s, beginning its existence as a bank. During Prohibition, the Mob took it over, converting the underground vaults into secret accounting offices and storerooms for liquor. Now, the subterranean complex served well as dark apartments for the thirteen members of Olivia’s circle.
Mike climbed up through the trap door in the coat closet and stepped out into the smoky club manager’s office. The fluorescent light momentarily made his eyes hurt, and he had to stare at an old dark Bauhaus poster for a few seconds to ease the pain.
Adrian took a drag off his cigarette and held out the phone. “She’s all yours, man.”
“Thanks.” Mike lifted the receiver to his ear. “Hello?”
“Mikey, is that you?” Julie sounded as if she had been crying.
“Yeah, how did you—”
“Oh, thank God I’ve found you! Look, I know it’s been a long time, but I’ve got to talk to you…this is my last quarter, can you meet me at the coffeehouse on the corner of Ninth and Wilshire?”
“Wait, I—”
“Please, Mikey, it’s a real genuine emergency! I’m here at the cafe now, promise you’ll come? Please? You’re the only one left.” Her voice was shaking, strained to the point of cracking.
With Julie, everything was an emergency; her life was one self-inflicted crisis after another. But he’d never heard her sound quite so upset before. “Oh, hell, okay, I’ll be there in a while.”
“Olivia’s gonna be pissed,” Adrian commented as Mike hung up and passed the phone back to him. No doubt he’d overheard the entire exchange. “I’d tell you to just blow this girl off, but I got the feeling she’ll keep calling back if you don’t show. She musta called a dozen times before I came to get you.”
“Yeah, she’s persistent, that’s for sure,” Mike sighed. “And I need to find out how she tracked me down, so I can make sure none of my family finds out where I am. Hey, is it still light out?”
“Yeah…here, take my shades and my trench.” He pulled a floor-length gunmetal gray suede coat off the wall hook and dug a pair of Gargoyles out of the inside pocket. “It’s too warm out for a coat, but people are gonna think you’re a freak anyway.”
***
A half-hour later, he was hurrying down the sidewalk toward the coffee shop. He kept his head down, hands jammed deep into the coat’s pockets, collar turned up high to protect at least some of his face from the rays filtering through the overcast sky. It was an utter myth that his kind would burst into flames if they were exposed to the light of day, but the sun was definitely not their friend. Soon after he’d been converted, he’d made the mistake of staying out past dawn in a T-shirt. In ten minutes, he’d ended up with a blistering burn on his face and arms that left him shivering and sick for days. All part of the cost of changing from mortal to immortal.
Changes. His gums itched around his loose canines; Olivia said his new fangs would push through in another month or two, and the rest of his teeth would be replaced during the coming decade. Happily, he hadn’t lost his superficial sexual ability, though he no longer produced semen. He’d look less and less human as the years passed, become more like Olivia in every way except his size and gender. She was a beautiful creature, to be sure, but couldn’t be mistaken for anything but what she was. All her teeth were as sharp as a serpent’s. The flesh beneath her skin had turned from red to purplish-blue, her gums and tongue sometimes almost black if she hadn’t fed in a while. Her irises had grown huge, her pupils the size of dimes. She could only safely expose herself in the freakshow atmosphere of the club, though she was so light-sensitive she’d banned strobes and blacklights. Still, she somet
imes went out into the city to hunt, cruising the dark streets in her big black Lincoln. He suspected she did it as much for the thrill of the risk of exposure as for the bloody satisfaction of taking unwilling prey.
Like the other young ones, Mike was merely pale, his lips slightly bluish, though he was far too muscular to be taken as anemic. He didn’t sweat and had lost all body odor, and he’d noticed that alone was enough to alert some people’s instincts and make them recoil. It almost seemed part of the grand design that they could pass for human their first twenty years, since that was often the span it took them to completely break their ties to family and unconverted friends.
He’d thought his relationship with Julie had been too slight to ever need re-breaking.
He pushed through the front doors of the coffeehouse, thankful that the place was dimly lit, grateful to be smelling coffee, chocolate and cinnamon instead of the oppressive diesel-and-garbage stink of the subway and city streets.
The pay phone was a few feet from the door, and Julie was leaning against it, chewing her thumbnail and sniffling. Her left eye was badly bruised, nearly swollen shut, and she had finger-shaped bruises on her left forearm. Her strawberry blond hair was uncombed, and she was wearing a ratty Kurt Cobain tee and torn jeans, the kind of clothes she’d wear around the house but would never willingly go outside in.
Her eyes widened when she got a good look at him, and she took a step back.
“Mikey, is that you?” she asked uncertainly.
He took off the Gargoyles and squinted at her. “Yeah, it’s me. What’s happened to you?” On second appraisal, he realized she’d gained about twenty pounds since the last time he’d seen her.
“Um, well, it’s sort of a long story…maybe you just need to see her.”
Mike followed her back to her booth. A few-months-old baby girl lay asleep in a yellow plastic carrier on the seat. She wore pink polkadot footed pajamas, and loosely clutched a white blanket.
Lucy A. Snyder - Sparks and Shadows Page 8
