Chapter 25 Zion
ZION
“Have we heard anything from our contacts in Ilasall?” Gedeon asked, standing at the side of the desk in his study. A sweat bead sparkled above his left eyebrow.
Leaning against the wall, Ezra fixed his messy bun low on his nape. “Not yet. We don’t want to risk radio contact. And, obviously, going into the city right now is not feasible.”
Another useless discussion. Ardaton had followed Coriattus’ example and upgraded its security system, but at least Damia’s compound had avoided an involuntary decrease in their numbers, as we’d warned them in advance.
“What about the microchips? Any news from the other compounds?” Eislyn delved into the mass of Gedeon’s notes scattered over the ebony desk and plucked out a hand-drawn blueprint. “What about the schools? When are the next auctions taking place?”
“They haven’t solved them yet.” I answered her first question as I cracked open a window.
A blast of the late summer heat assaulted me, the air itself sticky and clingy, dampening my t-shirt and pasting it to my chest, and I shoved the window closed.
Fresh air would’ve been nice, but not at the cost of an even higher temperature.
Slumped in a chair behind the desk we were gathered around, Sadira toyed with her thin black braids. “We haven’t discovered anything about the schools and their auctions either. Ryder, you came back from Damia’s yesterday. Any news?”
“No. Their compound is smaller than ours, so they can’t risk accidentally drawing Ardaton’s attention without insurance,” Ryder said, exploring the map of the three cities and our compounds hanging on the wall behind the ebony desk. “They’re going blind without direct access to their systems.”
“So we don’t know anything,” Eli remarked from the light gray suede couch situated several feet away from the wall lined with dark wood shelves, each brimming with rows of neatly organized books, all of them the same height, and the spines color-coded.
“Glower at me all you want; it doesn’t change a thing until we solve at least one of the problems.” He spread his arms along the backrest and hoisted his feet on the low table, ankles crossed.
Gedeon’s glare at dirtying up his coffee table bounced off Eli with no effect.
“He’s right. We can only wait.” And sit outside their walls like their obedient citizens with not a pea of grey matter in their brains.
“Fuck.” Gedeon splayed his palms on the desk and dropped his head. Dark waves falling over his forehead didn’t obscure the tension in his features. The daylight seemed to halt before him, not daring to illuminate him, as if that strain acted as his personal warden.
“What’s the plan? I don’t mean today. But the long-term plan, what is it?”
My head snapped toward the door at her voice.
Kali hovered in the doorway, dressed in a pair of black cotton shorts and a white t-shirt.
My mouth watered at her exposed legs, the flare of her hips.
I wondered if I could make her laugh by licking the inside of her knee.
A gnawing suspicion told me she’d be ticklish.
“Take down the cities,” Ezra said, walking around the desk and pausing at the front of our group. “Care to join the resistance?”
“Come on, don’t call us that,” Ryder reproached, without pausing his study of the map containing the last known active residencies of humankind. “Some simply live here. You know that.”
She bent down to scratch her calf. “When?”
“Soon,” I said, my voice as certain as the sun baking my back through the window. Neither was willing to budge.
“A year at minimum, likely two,” Gedeon objected, expressing his disapproval of me running headfirst in his tone.
Only my patience wasn’t going to last that long.
Leaning against the door frame, she crossed her arms and ankles. “What do you want from me?”
Everything. I strode across the polished pale wood floor toward her. “Your blood.”
Groans sounded from around the study, and Sadira snorted. “If anyone is in your debt, send them to Zion. He’s hungry again.”
People called me insane, unhinged, or deranged.
But the specific words didn’t matter. I had a fascination with blood.
The essence that flowed in the spiderweb of muscled tubes inside you.
How the abundance of the acquired-taste liquid kept you alive and lack of—dead.
Offering it to someone of your own volition meant gifting them a drop of your life.
Regarding me with suspicion, Kali took a step inside. “I’d prefer to stay alive.”
No one had said anything about me taking her life. Just a piece of it.
“Join us.” Gedeon gestured to everyone. “Not like you have much of a choice.”
She sighed dramatically. “Why do think I’m here? Aren’t you supposed to be smart, the leader of the compound and all?”
“Pretty birdie!” I picked her up and spun us around. Huffing, she clutched my upper back to keep her balance. A tiny smile worked its way to the surface, wiped off the next second by her composing herself and demanding I put her down.
I conceded, but not before squeezing her backside and kissing the tip of her nose. Every time I did it, she rubbed her nose in such a cute manner. It made it impossible to resist. And her ass had been way too squishy to prevent the flow of endless scenarios involving it from spinning in my mind.
“Go away, pretty boy.” She pushed at my chest. “I don’t do nice. You have no idea about the things I’ve done.
What had she done? Maybe we could compare our stories. Weave new ones.
As long as they involved either bodily fluids or steel, I was down.
Eli got up from the couch and closed in on our group. “You changed your mind?”
“You kidnapped me the day I got a new job. Assistant to the Head of Welfare. I finally had reached the point of my plan where I had access to data I desperately needed, and you took that away from me. And now, I can’t go back to Ilasall.
They’d rip me apart for missing too many days.
So I won’t.” She sauntered to Gedeon, who stood at the side of his ebony desk.
“But you are going to pay for it. Trust me, I’m a bad woman to keep. You’ll regret the day you stole me.”
Gedeon arched an eyebrow. “Sounds like you are afraid I will hunt you down if you run.”
Her knee connected with his crotch. A half-grunt, half-gasp rippled from him as he dropped to his knees.
Eli’s, Ezra’s, Ryder’s, and mine expressions matched. That pain… That was not pleasure.
But seeing her do it… Now that might have been a little bit satisfying.
She brushed her bare knee as if he’d gotten dust on it and looked down on him, mimicking his signature smirk. “If I can bring you down with a single kick, why should I be afraid?”
I shifted in my seat. The zipper in my jeans was starting to step on my nerves.
Sadira hoisted her left leg over the right in her seat. “This is way better than Vice.”
“Be nice.” Eislyn elbowed her, and Sadira rolled her eyes.
“I won’t join you for free,” Kali declared, towering over Gedeon, still reeling from how hunched forward he sat on his heels, the wrinkles slowly smoothing out on his forehead.
“Both of you are going to pay. I have conditions. For starters, what do your tattoos mean? They’re similar, but not identical.
And no one apart from you and Zion has them. ”
“It’s a mark of the leader and his closest, usually the second-in-command.
” Gedeon got up on one knee and gripped her hips so roughly his thumbs dug into her flesh, the dents visible through the fabric of her cotton shorts.
He’d never acted soft, but he also hadn’t said half the things bothering him out loud, either. “Enjoying the sight of me kneeling?”
I did.
She patted his cheek. “Can’t complain.”
I’d squeeze myself right about now, but it would likely give her the wrong idea. Her behavior had demonstrated that her experiences hadn’t been all sunshine and rainbows. So I tucked the image of them into the recesses of my memory for future use and discretely adjusted myself.
Well, maybe not exactly discretely. My hands might have lingered on my crotch a bit longer than they were supposed.
It wasn’t my fault.
Their positions had brought a fantasy to life. Well, more like the beginning of it. I couldn’t resist it—my imagination had no limits. Or I hadn’t discovered them yet.
Gods, what I’d give to have both of them, separately and at once.
My patience had cracked when I’d seen them in the clearing that first time.
The way Gedeon hadn’t noticed me catch up with him, the way he’d halted in the tree line, the way Kali had sat up and held herself, as if she commanded him, the way it’d taken him too long to figure out she only came on nights with a clear sky, the way she’d yell at him sometimes, the way my body had thrummed with the need to chain them both up in my underground to keep forever, the way I’d had to find someone to play with each time to stop myself from taking them both for myself.
Maybe a prayer could speed things along.
My mother had told me many folklore tales about people praying to their gods high up in the sky.
Supposedly, if you were good and pure, they’d grant you wishes from your prayers.
I was the opposite of innocent, but what if the gods were too?
The world had changed since those fairy tale times.
Maybe they’d grant me my desires if I pleaded darkly enough.
“What have I missed?” Jayla rushed into the room and came to a halt at the sight of Gedeon on the floor and Kali looming over him with her arms folded over her chest. “Damn. Seems I missed the show. Well, anyway, finish whatever this is later. I’ve got to go back to work in an hour.
What do we have to plan?” She plopped down on the couch and wiped away the sheen of sweat shining on her forehead.
“Why is it so hot here? Can someone open a window? No, you know what, never mind, it’s hot outside too.
I figured the last day of summer meant the weather would be cooling down.
” She tapped the reddened skin above her chest and winced.
“This is what I get for having freckles. Constant sunburns. And no tan.” Scanning the room, she pressed her lips together.
“I’m babbling, aren’t I? I’ll be quiet. I promise.
” She waved in a mocking bow. “Please, continue.”
Babbling was the right word. But she was useful. Working at Vice, she always had intel about people’s moods and spreading rumors.
Gedeon let Kali go, got up, and glared at the mass of papers scattered on his desk like they’d wronged him personally.
“We have nothing. No one can program the chips, and we can’t smuggle anyone out or resupply ourselves.
We also don’t know the locations of the auctions, which schools are next, and when they are set to take place. ”
Kali laughed.