LustAfterDeath (9 page)

Unconscious bodies decorated the hotel’s hallway. Numbers
rolled inside his mind—time ’til the next security shift, the angles of cameras
inside the suite. Bane felt the thoughts of each team member like a living
thing inside his head. Numbers 13 and 47 lifted the door off its hinges. 70 and
53 rushed inside.

In the blink of an eye his team’s rifles were trained on
the target. The man’s bed was lined with black silk. A female they hadn’t
expected to find lay nestled beside him. The two scuffled back toward the
headboard. Bane requested instructions from the base’s mainframe and received
the reply to eliminate them both.

He fired.

Bane turned from the bed and led the team down the
corridors to the freight elevator. Each member of his team turned to face him,
paralyzed. His mind fought to regain awareness and determine the next command
before he carried it out.

In a nanosecond of clarity, he saw what he would do and Bane’s
muscles screamed. One set of neurons fired frantically to keep his hand still,
while another set pounded the order to move. He jerked his hand, his biceps
tearing, trying to toss the gun away.

Sweat sprung from his pores. He watched the gun rise in his
grip and point at 53. Bane’s finger squeezed the trigger, the shot rang out
loud as an explosion, and his team member fell. The next three kills happened
in a blur.

Bane fell to his hands and knees and crawled to the
farthest corner from the bodies. The elevator started its descent to the
basement. His hand shook as he pulled the army knife from his pocket. He
recalled other times like this, different places, different times of day,
always ending the same, with bodies and blood.

He flicked on a lighter in his other hand and held the
flame under the knife until it reddened. When he lifted his shirt, Bane was
unsurprised to find a line of scars climbing one side of his torso and halfway
up the other, though he couldn't remember exactly when he’d gotten them.

He positioned the broad side of the knife above the
highest scar and pressed it into his skin. In the blinding-white pain, his
vision cleared. He saw every lifeless face staring up at him through dead eyes.
They flicked like an old movie in slow motion. Another scalding press of metal
on skin and the images poured through him again, cleansing in their horror.

Bane’s brow drew low and he knew he had to do it one more
time. He watched the metal heat this time with a whisper of confusion. It was
as if he’d forgotten something, which seemed ridiculous because his whole life
was a series of half-remembered sins.

The searing of his flesh brought a new memory, this one
so fresh it tore his chest in two. Josie’s smiling face crumpling before him in
disbelief, falling onto the dining room table across from her maker.

Chapter Nine

Bane’s thoughts shifted with a start. Josie. He’d felt the
touch of her mind on his. From under the haze of drugs that kept his body
immobile, Bane struggled to follow the whisper of her presence through the maze
of his neurons. Her image flashed at him from time to time, weaving as she
retreated.

Eventually, he found her in a bubble. Under the surface,
ferns burst in giddy explosions and moss-coated dying trees. Bane tried to
permeate the space, only to find it hard like rubber, a perfect sphere of
protection.

“Josie,” he whispered. The wall between them pulsed, and
Bane pressed inward with his mind. But the membrane held firm.

A voice spoke directly into his auditory cortex. “You scared
me.”

He wanted to comfort her but didn’t know how.

“Did you do all those things?” Her voice was soft and
ethereal.

Bane wished he could give her another answer. “Yes.” He
waited for her response. When she didn’t give one right away, Bane pulled back
his energy.

“Did you want to?”

He felt a caress, as if Josie stoked his face. A wave of
sadness threatened to swallow him, so that he nearly sobbed out the word, “No.”

A hand emerged from Josie’s bubble and grasped his shirt,
pulling him inside.

Bane’s mind crossed the threshold into Josie’s sanctuary.
Within it, she stood naked, on a mossy forest clearing wedged between enormous
trees. Green exploded all around him, but his eyes drank her in. Her hair was
longer in this mental re-creation. It covered her breasts and one of her eyes.
She looked at him shyly from behind its curtain.

“I’m so sorry.” She walked toward him and laid a hand on his
chest. Her touch felt almost real, and echoed with the reverberations of her
perception. Josie’s vision filled part of his sight, so that he perceived how
she saw him. Her gaze lingered at the bags under his eyes and the crease in his
forehead. She panned down to the scars at his neck and his chest, and then
traveled, one by one over the burns at his sides.

Her fingers travelled the same path as her attention.
Josie’s deep-brown eyes burned into his, and then she lowered her lips to kiss
the first mark.

Bane shriveled with shame. He lifted her head and pushed her
back.

Anger etched creases in her forehead. “But, you didn’t mean to…”

He turned his projection away from hers but didn’t leave
their bubble. “It doesn’t matter. If anything, that makes it worse!”

Josie’s hand gripped his shoulder, tugged him around harder
than she could have in the flesh. He expected her to argue with him, to tell
him he wasn’t responsible or some shit like Frank always did. Instead, she
looked at his foot, and then lifted her own small one and stomped down hard on
his arch.

Astral plane or not, it hurt like a bitch. Bane shut the
thought off as fast as it arrived, shielding Josie from his foul mouth.

“I can hear your thoughts, Bane. So stop it!”

He retreated to the concave wall of Josie’s sphere. She
advanced on him, her hair shorter now and whipping around her face. He hadn’t
noticed until this moment the strength in her thighs, or the way the flesh at
her shoulders ducked under her collarbone when she flexed her arms.

“Josie,” he said in a tone he imagined would calm her down.

“You are going to get over—” Her eyes scanned in the lower
right side of her field of vision and Bane felt the inside of his brain
scoured. “Your issues.” He blinked at the fierce look on her face. “And you’re
going to move—” She shoved his shoulders back. “The fuck—” She advanced another
step, and he thought she would sock him in the jaw. “On!”

Her hand wrapped around the back of his neck and Josie
planted a kiss on his mouth, not so much a kiss as a hot and hard sucking at
his lips. She bit his bottom lip and tugged it ’til he opened his mouth. Her
tongue snaked inside, so vicious and hungry he groaned and grabbed her naked
rear end.

She cupped his chin. The fingers of her free hand drifted
lower, into the curls of his chest and then along the center indentation of his
abdomen.

Her searching mouth moved to his chest and her hand closed
over his erection. It felt so real his dick swelled—bigger perhaps than it
would in real life. Bane’s eyes crinkled in amusement. It was partly her dream
too, after all.

She’d lowered her head to his cock.

“Careful, Jo…” His mind flashed on an image of semen lashing
Josie’s face, and Bane hurried to erase the idea.

Her face appeared directly before him. Her eyes widened, and
a smile curled the bow of her lips. “Oh, this is really wonderful.”

Josie followed the intriguing picture up through the pathways
in Bane’s mind. Buildings, cars, cities she’d never seen, bombarded her
consciousness.

Reading, writing, math she knew on some level she would
never actually need. Josie’s muscles danced under her skin, learning to load
and shoot a gun, to work something called a stereo, to fuck in a range of
positions, places and ways she’d never considered.

And she wanted to try every one.

“Josie—”

She looked past the waves of pictures flashing in her mind,
and to Bane’s handsome face. She lay on top of him now, though she wasn’t sure
if it was his brain or hers that took them to this position. His deep-blue eyes
darkened with sadness, and she knew he felt bad for exposing her to all this.

“Listen, I don’t think of you that way.”

Her legs spread to straddle his waist and she felt the blunt
tip of his cock poke at her back. She grinned and reached behind her to grip
his sex in her hand. “Yes you do.”

Bane’s body arched, thrusting into her fist. The movement
raised her astride him, sent a wave of heat to her center. She roved Bane’s
mind for the word for that part of her and found several colorful ones.

Josie bent to whisper in his ear. “I know you want to get me
on my hands and knees and spread my pussy open with your thumbs and watch your
cock sink inside me.”

“Oh fuck.” Bane flipped her over and landed with a
whoosh
on top of her body. He kissed her with a bruising heat and reached between her
legs. Josie smelled her scent in his nostrils and felt the damp softness of her
folds in his hand, but the pressure on her body was not enough. It was a
fantasy, a delicious, incredible arousing fantasy, but she didn’t just want to
dream about doing these things. “I need you.”

He growled in her ear, “I know, babe. But I can’t wake up.”

Josie cradled his face between her hands. She knew the rough
feel of his skin from memory. “Yes.” She bid the fantasy goodbye. “You can. And
you will.”

Josie’s eyes slid open. She looked around the room and then
out the small porthole.
Can you see what I’m seeing?
She spoke to Bane
in her mind.

Yes.

Islands passed out the window. Ahead she saw one dotted with
houses.

Bane answered the question forming in her mind.
That’s
Orcas. They must be heading to the mainland.

Her gaze fell to the door and Josie pulled down on the
handle, but nothing happened.

He locked it from outside
. Bane didn’t continue right
away, but Josie could almost see his face screwed up in thought.
You’ll have
to get out after Adam opens it. Can you still fight his voice commands?

She blushed and considered not answering, but Josie knew Bane
would learn the truth either way.
He can’t put me under now, not really. I
just did what he said at first because…well, I was scared.

And mad at me?
Bane sounded a mixture of amused and
frustrated.
Adam didn’t do the best job networking you in the first place,
but probably the reason you’re not under their control is that I still hold the
reins in your mind.

Josie’s lip quirked into a secret smile as she caught a
glimpse of what the word “reins” conjured in her lover’s head before he stamped
out the thought.

I didn’t mean to think that, Jo.
Bane growled the
apology, but Josie had lit upon an idea.

“You do, don’t you?” she asked aloud.

Josie…
He grumbled an admonition.
I’m not going to
put you under again.

“Oh yes you will, husband.” A sense of power welled up
inside her, as if she were a weapon about to go off. “You certainly will.”

* * * * *

Adam stole down the hallway. His senses tingled with the
psychic scent of his creation. In a day they would join Synaviv’s ranks and be
part of a larger family circle, but for a few more hours they existed as two
sides of the same coin, creator and creation.

He glimpsed the security feeds to make sure the animal who’d
stolen her was still sedated. The male stein lay supine on his gurney in a
bolted room. On another screen, Josie rested on her bed. He looked forward to
rousing her.

Tugging the door open, Adam thought he saw Josie stir. It
must have been a trick of the light because when he approached her body, she
lay still as death. He took a seat at the edge of her bed. Her eyelids
fluttered. She must be happy to see him.

Chapter Ten

Bane, please!
she shouted at his mind.
I might not
be able to fight him otherwise!

Adam’s touch traveled to her mouth, where he stroked her
lips with a bony finger. Then he slithered his hand down to her breast, which
he groped through her shirt.

It’s not a matter of mind control. He’s stronger than me.

Bane didn’t answer her, just retreated further from her
consciousness. Josie’s mind stalked after him, hardly aware that Adam’s head
had dropped to her chest, where he laved her nipple through the fabric of her
shirt.

You want this weighing on your conscience?

Bane’s thoughts erupted over hers.
You think I want this
to happen to you? I wanna fucking tear him limb from limb!

She refused to cow to Bane’s aggression, instead met his
blast with a hard one of her own. Adam’s hand stabbed under her shirt, then
down into the loose waistband in her pants, but Josie only felt Bane, his
presence a hard wall in her mind.
Then do it!

In her mind’s eye, Josie saw Bane’s face, his fierce
sky-blue eyes bore into her. Neurons fired as a message relayed to her auditory
cortex.
When this is over, you’ll come in my arms, Josie. But right now, I
want you to—

Josie’s knee stabbed into Adam’s groin. Her maker’s strangled
cry filled her ears and her hand reached to the gun lodged in his back pocket
and tossed it away. Bane moved her hand to snatch the pen off the side table
and Josie questioned Bane’s order for a fraction of a second, before she
plunged the writing implement deep into Adam’s eye socket and past that, into
his brain.

His garbled shout ripped through her senses. Blood
splattered her face. She yanked the pen back and forth in the confines of his
bones while Adam’s body convulsed on top of her. When Bane stopped directing
her movements, she shoved Adam off. He slumped to the floor, his body writhing,
his mouth forming words without meaning.