Black Phoenix by B. V. Larson & Wayne Wightman

Author:B. V. Larson & Wayne Wightman [Larson, B. V.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Iron Tower Press
Published: 2019-07-03T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter TWENTY-TWO

On his way back to his quarters, Scarn sorted through the ugly possibilities. Was there something about Neva that was screwing his life sideways and making him unpredictable even to himself? Maybe he was already “successfully” possessed by some alien. Or was this savage behavior just part of the inner human that was released in a man who grew up below-decks?

Once inside his quarters, he punched in the code for ten milligrams of Aggress-arrest, waited for the last drop to fall from the spigot, and swallowed it in a gulp.

At that point it registered that his bot’s message tone was subtly alerting him to an incoming call—Neva was trying to reach him.

“Yes?” he said to the machine.

Colors flickered in midair, and she appeared. She was speaking to him from a public place. “I’m sorry I missed our meeting. I’m not far from you. I can be at your quarters in five minutes.”

Regardless of all that had just happened, he only paused for two seconds. “Do that.”

So much for self-preservation.

He picked up clutter for a minute and then answered the door.

As tall as he, her pale eyes fixed on his. “I’m sorry. Just as I was leaving to see you, a call came in wanting me to verify some data I had processed last week. It was a mis-call, something Dallen had arranged, but it took me twenty minutes to figure that out. And by then...”

“Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter.”

His face brushed against her face as he held her, as her arms went around him. He was enveloped by the sound of her skin sliding across the fabric of his clothes, by the smell of her hair, and was now consumed by the hot taste of her mouth behind the softness of her lips.

Then, “I don’t understand this,” she said through her breath. “I’m not supposed—”

She pulled back enough to pull her neckline down to show him a perfect pair of breasts. They might have been real, or fake. He didn’t care which it was.

Beside his bed, in the dimmest light, her eyes glittered as her clothes fell to her feet. Scarn met her skin-to-skin and in those next minutes he was only nerves and muscle and blood, as aware of her as he was of himself. There was nothing to understand—he could only be and feel and erupt.

She clung to him as though saving her life.

“What,” he whispered as he breathed through her hair, “have you done to me?”

“You were free of being a human for a few minutes. I know what that’s like.”

“Maybe we’re possessed,” he said. “When I see you, a lot of circuits get turned off.”

From his clothes on the floor, a low tone signaled an incoming call.

Scarn had no intention of answering it till it did a triple chirp, meaning that the message was urgent, and that he was being paged in public places.

“You have to take that,” she said.

“Sorry,” he said to her. Then he spoke to the bot. “Block my image. Answer.”

A blob of light ran through the spectrum and then informed him that it was an official communication.

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