ElyriasEcstasy (7 page)

They all had jobs to do.

Lavinia, no longer exuding an air of wounded dignity,
dressed as quickly as he did, slipping the gossamer garment over her head,
lifting her heavy length of hair out from under the fabric. The two of them had
been interrupted once before, on a night when a lone Passenger had crossed into
a border town undetected by the Guard. One of Rune’s commanders, bursting in
here, had been treated to an eyeful of Lavinia’s naked, writhing flesh. On that
occasion she either hadn’t trusted in Rune’s phenomenal senses or believed his
warning that someone was rapidly approaching the room. And though she hadn’t
blushed at her exposure that night, she was apparently in no hurry to recreate
the incident.

As she pulled the thin slippers that barely qualified as shoes
onto her feet, Rune’s thoughts dwindled back to that same night, to what had
happened after the officer had issued his orders. He and Urna had strapped on a
pair of waiting wings and set out. It had been early on in their careers, when
they were still learning the outer limits of their incredible abilities. In
those days they’d been on call for border incidents. The missions into the
Unsafe hadn’t yet been implemented by military policy. The Weapon/Shadowflash
division was just then being formed, apparently around the two of them.

The lone daring Passenger had attacked a young boy and the
rundown border town was already erupting into panic. Initial reports that were
indistinguishable from rumor told that the child had been outside chasing an
escaped pet, foolishly leaving the relative safety of his family’s shabby home
several hours after the midnight curfew. By the time Rune and Urna were
tracking the Passenger, several arrests had been made in the town for other
curfew violations and the Lux back in their city were starting to panic
themselves. Any civil disorder was a threat to the delicate balance that had
allowed them to stay in power so long, despite being, according to population
numbers, a clear minority.

When they’d located the Passenger a short time later,
retreating back into the Unsafe, there had been a crust of gore on its hands,
all the way up to its spindly wrists. Gruesome lace gloves was how Urna had
described it, whispering back to Rune across a half-mile of deserted wasteland
as he ran the creature down. He’d also said the beast appeared disoriented,
almost lost, liked it had strayed into the town by accident.

Rune had never seen that Passenger himself or the disfigured
face of the child they had avenged. Nevertheless the images were burned into
his mind, as he suspected they were burned into his Weapon’s.

“This is
fucked
,” Urna had said to him that night,
looking directly into his face as he’d wiped black ichor from his sword. Rune
hadn’t been sure if he meant the night’s incident in particular, or if it was
some larger comment concerning their own military status. Or maybe it was a
criticism of the Safe’s society, which pushed its poorest residents to the
literal margins. Border towns were technically a part of the Safe, but they
weren’t
safe
. Everybody knew that.

Lavinia stood next to him as the seconds ticked down. Though
she was a head shorter than Rune in those flat little shoes, her poise made her
seem taller than her height. Shoulders back, chin up. They waited,
professionals together.

The alarms were still wailing.

“It’s a guard,” Rune said. Again he had no idea why he
bothered, but suddenly he wanted to share something with her, even if it was
only a scrap of information, before she was sent away from him. He half
expected her not to respond, was mildly surprised when she looked up at him.

“How do you know?” she asked. She sounded genuinely curious.
Maybe even after all this time she still didn’t quite believe in his abilities.
All the others in the program could only aspire to what this Shadowflash could
do.

“Boots,” he replied. “The guards wear boots with treads on
the soles.” If it had been Urna here, Rune could’ve said which toes were
wriggling inside those boots.

“I don’t hear anything,” Lavinia said.

The shadow of the guard appeared under Rune’s door, stopped.
Lavinia glanced at Rune again, not hearing the tiny beep and click that Rune
detected perfectly as the guard swiped his ID through the card-lock. If he’d
been trying a bit harder, he could have identified the individual guard based
on the coded tonality of the card.

It was a man who Rune recognized, but only from having
glimpsed him in the halls on his way back and forth from his room. A regular
security agent, not an officer. So what the hell was he doing opening Rune’s
door? He made his displeasure known by narrowing his eyes, but the guard was
nonplussed.

He regarded the Shadowflash and the woman for a moment
before speaking, not surprised to see them standing and obviously waiting, not
wary of Rune’s countenance.

“The Toplux requests your immediate presence,” he said. He
looked at Lavinia, seemed uninterested in meeting her eyes directly. “You too,”
he said to her ample chest.

“Me?” Lavinia blinked rapidly, her smoky lashes a dark blur
above round cheeks. “Why?” Not a very professional question to ask.

Rune almost smirked. No one asked why the Toplux did
anything. But he couldn’t deny the order was an unusual one. Especially at this
hour, with the compound’s alarms still going. Clearly, something wasn’t right.
Probably Urna had been summoned to the Citadel, too…and that thought—damn
it—quickened Rune’s heart a little.

Moments later, as they crossed the open ground heading
toward the Citadel building itself, the alarms finally wound down into silence.

* * * * *

Aphael Chav surveyed the small assembly in his private
receiving chamber, appraising them with no small amount of contempt, not all of
it warranted. His mood was foul. He didn’t like being woken, particularly by
alarms. But he didn’t let his emotions interfere with his cold calculations.

His eyes passed over the Shadowflash first. This was Rune,
or at least that was his code. But the random four-letter designation that
represented each Weapon and Shadowflash seemed especially suited to this one
somehow.
Rune
. It had a vaguely sinister sound to it. The Shadowflash’s
eyes, though glazed with the drugs meant to keep him and the others like him
docile through the night, betrayed a wisdom beyond the years that showed on his
exotically pale face, as if he were somehow connected to the ancient. To a time
erased by the darkness and the presence of the Black Ship.

Were the Toplux to be honest with himself, the
Shadowflash—all of them, in fact—unnerved him more than any Weapon. Weapons
might be capable of phenomenal violence, but the Shadowflashes
heard
things. They saw things without actually seeing them, including that which they
weren’t meant to, and so he was careful with his facial expressions, careful
not to reveal anything more than what he spoke out loud.

This Shadowflash, well…he was the best, wasn’t he? No one
could argue that. And that made him the most dangerous, and was the reason why
this current situation had the potential to implode. Why it was, in short, a
disaster.

But there was still time to clean it up.

Aphael turned his gaze over to the woman accompanying Rune,
dismissive even though he had specifically ordered her brought before him. A
glance at her told him all he needed to know. She almost certainly had nothing
to do with the escape that had occurred, just as the other woman who’d lain
tonight with the Weapon was absolutely not involved in some tangled conspiracy.
But there was the rub—
almost
. These sows, he knew, sometimes connived
and contrived, wheedling favors from the weaker officers, like fancy clothes or
increased rations.

He addressed the guard who had brought both visitors here.
“Take this breeder into custody along with the other. The one that spent the
evening with
him
.” He waved his hand toward the receiving chamber’s
doors. Then, not quite an afterthought, “Have the Interrogators release Miss
Temple for tonight.”

He could always have his dear Virge arrested another time.
He didn’t want the Guard distracted right now. They had already been mobilized
and were being sent into the streets of the Lux city that surrounded the
Citadel. This was something of a dicey operation, however, since the Guard
officially had no jurisdiction over the military—and it was, after all, a
member of the military, a
Weapon
, who had gone AWOL. Still, it wouldn’t
do to flex too much militaristic muscle in the city. The Guard were supposed to
keep order domestically.

The woman, belted into a coarse robe over some gauzy bit of
nothing, was removed from the chamber. The space felt close, the air heavier,
as Aphael Chav faced Rune alone. The Shadowflash was waiting stoically,
obviously aware that something unusual was afoot tonight.

The Toplux paced a few steps. He wore silken nightclothes
and his white hair was in disarray. Even so, he was sure he exuded an air of
control, of authority. It was so familiar a front he was confident that even
this ultimate Shadowflash couldn’t perceive his anxiety.

He gazed at his receiving chamber’s baroque furnishings and
fixtures. This crisis was dire and action needed to be taken urgently. But this
situation, here in this room, was also an emergency of sorts, one which needed
to be handled delicately. Aphael, after all, knew of the relationship between
the two members of his very best Shadowflash/Weapon team. He perhaps understood
the depths of their relationship even better than the men themselves. After
all, he had knowledge of their shared past, which the drugs of the military
medical technicians had systemically erased from the two men’s minds.

When he halted and turned to face Rune once again, he found
somewhat to his dismay that he had to suppress a shiver. There was an intensity
about the man, something not quite human.

Hah.
Well, the freak wasn’t strictly human, was he?
Or at least he had natural abilities that no normal human was supposed to have.

“You heard the alarms?” the Toplux asked.

“I did.”

A silly opening question, Aphael Chav thought, but one had
to start somewhere. “There has been an escape.”

Dark blue eyes blinked. “From the Guard facility?”

“No.” The Toplux drew in a breath, held it a moment then
said, “From the military complex. A Weapon has broken out of his quarters and
gone over the fence. Several soldiers were injured in the process. We require
that this escapee return to the Citadel.”

Those eyes widened, but otherwise Rune showed no reaction.
He continued to stand stiffly, awaiting his orders.

And now here they came, Aphael thought grimly. “It is Urna
who has fled. I require you to find him.”

Chapter Five

“There is vermin in every city,” Rune muttered on the
rooftop, preparing to strap on the waiting set of wings.

“Uh, how’s that, sir?” asked the trooper attending him. He
seemed a boy to Rune, though they might be only a year apart in their ages for
all the Shadowflash knew.

Rune waved dismissively. “Forget it.” He hadn’t meant to utter
his familiar observation aloud. It was ironic that he was voicing it here, in
the Safe, at the Citadel, which stood at the very heart of this most prosperous
Lux city. But it was still the truth, he saw with cold clarity—vermin in
every
city.

Urna had fled the complex. Had attacked several guards and
gone over the fence. Urna had escaped!

How
dare
he. How dare the
…
the… Suddenly none of the vivid
vulgarities that Urna had collected over the years from his precious books,
some of which Rune too had inevitably absorbed, seemed adequate. He wanted to
curse the Weapon. He wanted to damn him as no human had been damned before. He
wanted to make his name poison. He…

Wanted the son of a bitch back. There. He’d admitted it.
Insufficient epithet or not.

Shooting his eyes at the soldier on the roof with him, he
saw that this time at least he hadn’t unintentionally spoken out loud. The
rooftop was festooned with solar panels, meant to catch the daylight and
convert it into power. The soldier was bringing the wings to him now. Rune was
ready to receive them. He had changed into his combat garb, the loose-fitting
black clothes. They felt comfortable on his lean frame—though they also
reminded him that his counterpart, always similarly dressed, wasn’t here with
him tonight on this mission. No. Tonight his partner
was
the mission.

The trooper did up the harness for Rune with something like
ceremonial solemnity, though the Shadowflash was perfectly capable of doing it
himself. Some of these soldiers, he knew, were in awe of the members of the
Weapon/Shadowflash division. They regarded those who ventured into the Unsafe
to slay Passengers as nearly mythological. The military, however, wasn’t merely
a support staff for the Passenger killers, though much of its personnel were
given over to housing, guarding, feeding, administering, doctoring and training
the Shadowflashes and Weapons.

The troopers based here at the Citadel served another
function. They were the private reserve army of the Lux. If ever true civil
unrest were to sweep through the Safe, if the general population rose up
against the rightful power structure in any significant way, beyond what the
Guard themselves could handle, then the military would defend the Lux to the
last soldier. That was their ultimate, if unspoken, purpose. Every trooper knew
it.

Rune checked his gauge. These wings were among the few
devices that operated on fuel rather than electrical batteries. The wings’
straps, as usual, felt uncomfortable across his shoulders, but there was
nothing to be done about that.

“Good luck, sir,” the trooper said, giving him a stiff,
formal salute.

Rune turned a baleful eye on the earnest youngster.
Was I
ever like that?
he wondered. He didn’t know, not really. He couldn’t recall
exactly when he and Urna had joined the military. He retained scattered
remembrances of adolescence, of early days of training, but there wasn’t
anything explicitly bridging those two periods of time. One day he’d been a
teenager, the next a soldier. Or so it seemed, amidst the blurry swirl of his
memory.

“Stand back,” he said curtly to the soldier as he ignited
the wings’ engine. They were atop the tallest building in the military complex,
a good site for a launch. From here he could see the glittering lights of the
Lux city spreading every which way. Urna was out there somewhere, having
decided to abandon his duties for some inexplicable reason. Wherever he was,
he’d passed beyond the one mile range of Rune’s senses. The Guard had already
been mobilized and they were just starting to pour through the streets. But it
was Rune who had been charged with finding the errant Weapon by the Safe’s
highest authority, the Toplux himself.

Rune would not fail. He would hunt that son of a bitch down
and bring him back. He would never let his lover escape him.

The wings whined to their full capacity and lifted the
Shadowflash from the roof, up into the star-pricked nighttime.

* * * * *

Arvra Finean had already decided that this fat whore had
only one use.

“Then he said that someone was coming and he pulled out. He
didn’t even shoot his load. I didn’t know guys could do that. Y’know, just
stop
.
I thought—”

They had been dumped into this cell. First Arvra, then this
other female. Laveena was her name. Or something like that. She too was one of
those women periodically brought in to service either Urna or Rune, the two
most famous members of the army’s Shadowflash/Weapon division. The two were
celebrated for their bravery and talents throughout the Safe, even in the
border town that was Arvra’s home.

Since Arvra had lain with Urna tonight, she deduced without
much effort that Laveena here must have been sent in to spread her legs for
Rune, who was the Shadowflash of the pair. Arvra tried to make herself
comfortable on the bare cot on which she sat. The Guard who had brought her to
this cell had offered no explanation as to why she being detained and she knew
well enough not to ask. Hell, she knew more than well enough. Glancing down,
she could see the scar across her belly through the sheer fabric of the lingerie
she still wore. They hadn’t even given her a robe to cover herself further,
like they had for
this
motormouth.

“He can be rough sometimes. Not all the time, though. I
guess I’ve been with him, uh, I don’t know, lots of times. Sometimes, when he’s
being really rough—”

On and on and on. She’d gone for at least ten minutes now
without Arvra inserting a word. At first, when she’d figured out who this woman
was, Arvra had considered comparing notes with her regarding their “lovers” (it
was a term that definitely belonged inside quotation marks), just to help pass
the time. But something had held Arvra back. Certainly she didn’t love Urna. It
wasn’t possible she could harbor truly deep feelings for a man she was
specifically recruited to have sex with, whether she wanted it or not. And also
Urna could be…unpleasant. Some of the time.

Somehow, though, it would’ve felt cheap to her to share
memories and opinions about the Weapon with this other female. After all, Urna
had held her in his arms earlier, trying to deliberately comfort her. When he’d
finally mounted her, it had been something that almost resembled making love.

She sagged back further onto the cot. The walls were gray
and there was nobody outside the barred door. Alarms had gone off earlier, and
the Guard had apparently mobilized. Again Arvra had no idea what was going on.

A tiny warmth lingered in her, something she barely
acknowledged. Urna had left his seed in her tonight, but if it was like the
other times she’d lain with him, nothing would come of that sex session. They
wanted her pregnant by the Weapon. That much she had worked out, garnering
clues over the months. Sometimes the Guard members who delivered the summons to
her at her border town slipped up and jeered a few words at her that they probably
weren’t supposed to. Arvra was intelligent. She had put the pieces together.

She didn’t want to carry Urna’s child. Distantly she
wondered if this Laveena here knew that she was supposed to get herself
dutifully knocked up by Rune. She sniffed a laugh to herself.

The other woman, who had been pacing the small cell while
she blathered, heard the laugh, and came sharply to a halt. She looked down at
Arvra with an expression that hovered between haughtiness and hurt, angry
pride. “Am I
amusing
you?”

This wasn’t the first cell Arvra had found herself in. That
tale she had told Urna earlier tonight—and why, exactly, had she done that?—had
been incomplete. Yes, her brother had gone salvaging in the Unsafe. Yes, his
group had been found out and the Guard had come down on them. What she hadn’t
told Urna was that she, Arvra, had gone on illegal salvage raids into the
Unsafe herself. Several times. Often enough that when she started regularly
dealing the goods she brought back, suspicion had fallen on her despite her
precautions. Twice the Guard had picked her up for questioning. Twice she’d
bald-faced claimed her innocence.

But those experiences had taught her something about jail
cells.

Not shifting on the cot, but quietly tensing her muscles,
she looked up at the other person in the cell and said, with a trace of steel
in her words, “I’m not amused. I’m annoyed. You haven’t shut you mouth since
they brought you here, Laveena.”

The woman’s eyes had a natural carnal glint to them and they
opened wide now, with a dangerous fire dancing within. She pressed her full
lips together as she glared at Arvra. She put her hands on her hips, elbows
akimbo.

“My name,” she said, over-enunciating every syllable, “is
Lavinia.”

It suddenly struck Arvra as ludicrous and she burst into
full laughter. Nevertheless, she kept an eye on her cellmate, lest her eruption
spark a truly angry reaction. After a moment, however, Lavinia (a much prettier
name, Arvra decided), shrugged her somewhat broad shoulders and offered a
chuckle of her own. It had a nice sound, rumbly and rich. Arvra further judged
that her earlier silent estimation of the woman as fat was unwarranted. It was
only that she was curvy, with flaring hips evident even beneath the coarsely
fibered robe. Her hair was full and dark, unlike the wild multicolored tufts of
Arvra’s hairdo. She’d always tended toward the strange when it came to her
hair. As a girl of eight or so she had once shaved her head, just to see what
it looked like. All the boys had made fun of her. She hadn’t cared a bit.

“Well, okay, Lavinia. I think we’re going to be here awhile.
You might as well make yourself comfortable.” Arvra gestured to the opposite
cot. Then, on impulse, she added, “Why not lose that robe? It looks kind of
scratchy.” Really, though, she wanted a better look at Lavinia’s figure.

The flames of anger that had flickered in her eyes a moment
ago seemed to transmute themselves as Lavinia paused to regard Arvra. A
knowingness moved her lips. Arvra hadn’t expected so astute a response. Then
again, whatever else she was, this woman was apparently no fool with regard to
certain matters.

Lavinia pulled on her robe’s sash until the garment parted.
Following a graceful roll of her shoulders, it fell about her ankles. Arvra
drew in a breath, held it briefly. Releasing it, she felt a quivery sensation
moving through her. It wasn’t entirely out of the ordinary—she had often found
other females attractive. But the force of her reaction was surprising. She
counted back, tried to remember the last time she had been with a woman.
Last
time?
she wondered with a little dismay. Did that mean she had already
mentally committed herself to
this
time?

Well, she thought wryly, she did know something about
passing the time in jail cells.

The attire of diaphanous fantasy revealed by the robe’s
absence wasn’t dissimilar to what Arvra herself wore. It definitely gave her a
good view of this woman’s body, which was ample but decidedly in proportion,
and incontestably becoming. Lavinia was letting her have a good view too, being
very deliberate about it. Her mouth was quirked into a smile, her eyes alight.
Moments ago she had been brimming with wounded pride. Now she appeared playful,
almost kittenish, though there was little about her that seemed genuinely
innocent.

Lavinia made an elaborate pantomime of moving toward the
cell’s other cot, as Arvra had recommended a moment before. Before she planted
her ripe and nearly bare backside on it, Arvra said with her best approximation
of a seductive purr, “No, no, sweetie. It’s more cozy over here.” And she
patted the barely-there padding beside her, sitting up on the thin cot as she
did so.

For a moment Lavinia looked shocked, but it was only
playacting. She sashayed the two steps to Arvra’s cot, turned and daintily sat.
Arvra took a look past her to their cage’s door, still seeing and hearing no
one in the corridor beyond. Well, if those Guard bastards were going to leave
them to their own devices, they would damn well
devise
something! A
wicked grin pulled on her lips, shifted her jaw.

Lavinia was sitting close, the soft bare flesh of her thigh
just grazing Arvra’s more muscular leg. Arvra felt excitement still rising in
her. “My name is Arvra Finean.” Stupid time for a formal introduction, she
thought, putting it down to the delightful, quivery nervousness she felt.

Full lips moved, communicating mirth. Eyes glittered,
conveying unmistakable arousal. “My full name’s Lavinia Jamavla.”

“Pretty name.” Arvra was leaning toward her. “For a pretty
woman.” Then their lips were touching, that initial wondrous contact, full of
sparks and jeopardy and possibilities. Lavinia’s thicker lips seemed to envelop
hers, melting over them, warming her. Their mouths moved in a sudden harmony.
Little of the sweet delicacy of the moment was lost when Lavinia’s tongue
emerged and Arvra met it with her own. In a remote corner of her mind, she
wondered if this female could taste the fading flavor of Urna’s cock in her
mouth from earlier this evening. But an instant later the Weapon had vanished
from her thoughts, and she was only here, with this woman, taking what solace
she could find, stealing comfort from an otherwise discomfiting night.

Lavinia’s hands were larger than her own, but they had a
babyish softness to them, which felt good when she stroked the side of Arvra’s
face, even as their kiss deepened and deepened. Their tongues tangled with a
greater urgency now. Their mouths were grinding wetly. Lavinia poured hot
breath into Arvra’s body, a rising sigh trailing behind.