Harem Apocalypse: Every Moan Levels Us Up!

"Where are you?"

Sinn’s voice came out of the comms tight and moving, the sound of a man circling a desk he couldn’t sit at. I’d put him on speaker because there was nobody in this building to hide him from. The words filled the reception and settled against the stone.

Venna leaned back against the wall, knees drawn up, one leg stretched straight along the polished counter. Afternoon light cut a hard gold rectangle across her bare thigh and the curve of her hip. Sweat still marked the hollow of her throat in a thin, shining line. She watched me with a smile she wasn’t bothering to hide—small, private, the kind that lived mostly in the eyes.

"Safe. Long way from headquarters."

"Can you get through?"

"No."

"You can. I’ve seen what you do. I watched you in the Fallen City."

"I can’t." I didn’t dress it up. "I’m not alone, General."

A pause on the line. I could hear him deciding how to ask—the small shift in breathing that came before the careful version of a question.

"Who’s with you?" And then, carefully, "Are they important?"

Venna’s eyebrow went up. The smile didn’t leave. It only changed quality, deepening at one corner. The light caught the blue of her hair where it had dried in uneven waves against her shoulder.

"Yes." I held her eyes across the counter. "Very."

The smile widened and stayed. Something softer moved behind it.

"I see." Something went out of his voice, some authority he’d been holding. The sound that remained was closer to a man than a rank. "I’m going into a meeting on how we handle this. I wanted you in the room. Nobody inside these walls understands the infected the way you do, and I’m about to sit in front of people who have never seen one." A beat. "But it’s fine."

"I’m sorry, sir."

Venna’s fingers found mine and started moving through them, slow, and her whole face had changed. Not the smile anymore. Genuine astonishment at the conversation she was listening to and at who was on the other end of it. The blue of her eyes held the light and didn’t look away.

"One more thing." He caught it before either of us could end the call. "We’ve put the army on the streets."

I let go of her hand. The loss of contact was sudden and deliberate.

"That’s not a good idea."

"I’m told the numbers are manageable." His voice had settled. He’d sat down somewhere. The restless edge was gone.

"How many did you send?" I came off the counter and put my feet on the floor. The stone was still warm.

"Enough. And let’s not make this larger than it is, Abram. We watched bullets put them down in the Fallen City. I saw it myself."

"Yeah." I crossed to the window and looked out at a road with the sun going long across it. The light had turned the colour of old copper. Empty asphalt. No movement. Only the long shadows of things that had already passed. "Some of them out there are ability holders. I watched one open a hole in the ground this morning without touching it."

Nothing came back for a moment. The silence on the line was complete.

"So what are you telling me?"

"That you sent soldiers to shoot at things that can hit them from across a street." I watched an empty road. Dust moved slowly in the angled light. "Prepare for both outcomes. That’s all I’m saying."

The silence ran long. Somewhere in the building a board settled with a soft complaint.

"That," Sinn said, "is exactly why I called you."

He hung up.

I stood there with the comms cooling on my wrist and worked out the actual shape of it. It wasn’t about the infected. He had specialists for that, or he had people who’d claim to be.

What he didn’t have was anybody left who talked to him like a man instead of a title. Bala was in the ground. Mercury had walked out of his office swearing at him. Somehow that left me. The knowledge sat quiet and heavy under my ribs.

"Sounds like somebody wants to take you away from me," Venna said. She shifted on the counter. The movement was slow, deliberate; the light slid across the soft plane of her stomach and the dark line of her underwear.

"Nobody’s taking me anywhere." I stepped back in and put my hands on her waist. The skin under my palms was still warm, still slightly damp from the heat and everything that had come before it. "I’m not walking out of this building without you in front of me."

"Okay."

Her arms went around my neck. Her legs locked at the small of my back. The weight of her settled against me, familiar now, complete. The counter edge pressed into the backs of my thighs.

"So what’s next on the schedule?"

"Bath." She counted it on my shoulder, one finger at a time, the pads of her fingers cool against the heat of my skin. "Then you. Then the libra."

"You want me dead. That’s what this is."

"You’d go first," she said into my neck, laughing. The sound moved against my skin. "Obviously."

"Bath and the libra." I took the first step with her weight on me. The corridor opened ahead of us, cooler by comparison, the boards creaking under the combined load. "That’s the offer."

"Fine."

"That was easy."

"It wasn’t." She tightened her arms. The pressure was light and absolute. Her forehead rested against the side of my neck. "I’m just tired."

I carried her out into the corridor.

Food behind us. Water. A locked door and a stone building that had held all day. And at the end of the hall, a dark room where my father was standing in a doorway with a newborn in his hands and a question I hadn’t been ready to ask yet. The memory of blue eyes and blue hair sat behind my own eyes and refused to leave.

"Careful, Bram."

The libra had shown us her mother’s death and my mother’s face and a baby with blue eyes.

Whatever it had been holding back, I had the feeling it was finished waiting.