LustAfterDeath Read online

  He shouted, finding her face right up to the glass. Her mahogany stare met his—surprised, curious, but not frightened. One corner of her mouth curled up into a lopsided, cherubic smile. She reached out a hand to the window and traced his face. When her fingertips covered his lips, her other hand reached up, stroking her own mouth.

  Bane lost his grip, and with a winding thud, fell flat on his ass.

  Chapter Two

  Bane tromped as far along the house as he could then back again. He flicked his lighter on and off out of sheer nerves. His head pounded with a hangover and his neck ached from sleeping on the ground. He should have slept on the damn boat, not camped in a bivy sack outside her window.

  Brush licked at his thighs. Water beaded on the material of his pants. Bane brushed the moisture off with his palms and crouched to run past one sweeping camera, and then another, before reaching her window.

  He drew up the milk crates and climbed up to the ledge. Bane flinched to find her standing right by the window as if she’d been waiting.

  She smiled. Bane thought he’d had beer goggles last night when he watched her, but she was the real goddamn deal—a re-animated angel. Her pale fingers traced his face and for a second he closed his eyes.

  Then he thought better of it. He might not remember his transgressions after this assignment, but she might. Bane raised a stern finger and then reached in his pocket and lifted his handwritten note up to the window.

  Her forehead drew together and her eyes darted along the lines. When she looked at him again and her lips bowed into a shy smile, he realized she’d understood nothing.

  He growled low in his chest. An ache settled there as well. He’d hoped that asshole had at least built her intelligent. Bane didn’t know why he cared whether the stein was nothing more than a husk of a person. But she seemed like more.

  Her lips moved and she waved her hands. He couldn’t understand what she said, but she seemed to be speaking more to someone behind her. Pinning the windowsill in his fingers, he rose up on tiptoe and scanned deeper inside the room.

  She was talking to a damn cat. Worse than that, from the look of it she was talking to what used to be roadkill. The girl picked up the catenstein and started petting it, murmuring words in its scarred, hairy ear.

  Bane tapped on the window to get her attention. When she turned back to him, he mouthed, “I'll be back soon.” Her eyes widened and grew wet. He tapped the glass again, then placed a hand over his heart and mouthed, “I promise.” The girl squared her shoulders back and wiped her hand across her eyes, and then her nose. She petted the glass by his face.

  He closed his eyes and breathed heavily. “I'll be back.”

  She nodded then waved a goodbye.

  No sooner did Bane’s feet touch ground than he dialed the ZU. “I need to wrap this shit up, Q! Tell me what I want to hear!”

  The sound of chewing carried over the line, and then slurping like Q-ter was sucking something through a straw. “What do you want me to say? We agreed three days.”

  Bane heard the sound of a computer beeping and pinging in the background. He scrubbed a hand over his face. “So help me, if you are gaming—”

  “What’s the deal? Things bad there?”

  Bane heard clicking of keys and knew Q-ter had gotten his ass in gear. “Yeah, they’re bad. She’s seen me. And I don’t know if she’s got the bandwidth not to say anything.”

  A sputter of coughing erupted from the other end of the line. “You let her see you? Who are you, and what have you done with Bane Connor?”

  Ignoring Q-ter’s dorky joke, Bane trudged back to his bivy and gear. He assessed his set-up. He could be packed and out in a little over an hour, not counting download time in Adam’s lab. “I got sloppy.”

  Q-ter sounded distracted when he answered. “You don’t get sloppy.”

  Bane passed his hand over his face, remembering the girl’s tentative caresses on the glass. “Well, I did this time.” He opened one of his packs and pulled out a bottle of water. The other end of the line was silent, but Q sometimes lost his ability to talk when he interfaced too hard. Bane waited.

  “Eat me!”

  “Wassup?” The kid hardly ever cursed. Worry, something Bane thought he hadn't been reborn with, slid up his spine.

  “The situation’s sloppier than you think.”

  * * * * *

  Synaviv Operative 402 downloaded the coordinates, storing them in a section of his mind accessible to the others on the boat. All twelve of his men sat behind him on the motorboat’s benches.

  “We have the location.” The voice that responded in his head sounded like his own, the part of him located at the company’s Bellevue campus. Few operatives could communicate over distances, even with the company’s redundant and always shifting layers of coverage. Synaviv required hinges like him to lead missions.

  Pride rushed to 402’s mind, and he set his neurotransmitter receptors to higher uptake before HQ could notice his fluctuation in mood.

  “Danger?” The voice of Synaviv’s server queried his brain.

  “No,” he answered. “Just…” He didn’t want to say “happiness” or even “annoyance”. The parts of his mind that processed feelings were supposed to have been removed. “We will not reach the island for approximately one hour.”

  “Approximately?”

  “Some variables cannot be accounted for. The closest weather center is located in Friday Harbor.”

  The voice went silent.

  402 circled in a wide arc, pointing the bow toward Patos Island and the scientist’s lair.

  “Make sure to bring in her maker too. No matter his condition.”

  402 telepathed his assent, then cut the connection. Maintaining contact over such long distances taxed his charge. And sometimes it was nice to only hear silence.

  * * * * *

  I’m ready. Go!

  Bane clicked off his phone on Q-ter’s message and then crouched as he ran alongside the house, the reassuring weight of his pistol filling his hand. He reared up at the scientist’s door, unloaded two rounds into the doorknob and kicked hard, shredding the remains of the handle. A wide dining room lay ahead. Josie in a wedding dress and her maker in a tuxedo stared up at him from a candlelit table. His ocular nerve sent the image to the positioning center in his cerebral cortex. Bane drank in her hopeful expression while, without looking, he shot Dr. Adam Friedman between the eyes.

  Bane heard the scientist’s head thunk on the table and the girl smiled as if he were a knight in fucking shining armor. The glimmer only lasted a second, though, before her gaze dimmed, grayed. The newborn stein convulsed once and then she died.

  Chapter Three

  Bane turned up the volume on his headset and heaved the female over his shoulder. White taffeta flapped around his eyes and he shoved it out of the way. “Motherfucker, Q! What the hell just happened?”

  “I don’t know! He must have set her up to require neural feedback from him. Guy probably planted a chip in his brain. Like a stein.”

  Bane scrubbed at his chin and swiveled his head, looking for where the doctor would have stashed his lab. His gaze caught the guy’s limp body. He scanned the skin of his face, looking for a telltale scar. “How long would it take me to dig it out?”

  “I don’t recommend that. Just send me whatever he has on his hard drives. I can reason something out.”

  Bane cursed into the phone. His eye caught a half-wall, and when he investigated, he found a staircase leading down to a basement door. “Jackpot.” He patted the girl on the rump before running down the stairs and into the scientist’s lab. He poked his head into several small rooms housing animals in cages and walls of jars. The hallway emptied into a wide room banked with a central island of computers and monitors. Next to it sat a gurney, and Bane laid the girl on it before pulling out his stack of hard drives and the ZU’s laptop. He sat and rolled the desk chair into its dock.

  He inserted the USB port. “I'm connecting you no
w. How long ’til you break the—”

  “I’m in!” Q-ter cut him off and Bane watched the bites stream from the scientist’s set-up to the Underground’s mainframe. Yeah, the kid was that good.

  “D’you still want me to load what I can on the external drives?” He connected another port as he asked.

  “Absolutely.”

  Bane started clicking files from one drive to another when the creak of a door opening sounded from upstairs. “Fuck me! Synaviv’s here. I thought you said I’d have a few hours.”

  Q-ter’s distracted voice mumbled, “They must have been closer than I calculated.”

  Bane stole down the hallway and shut the internal dead bolt on the door, then ran back to the girl. “Tell me something good, Q. I don’t know if she’ll keep fresh all the way back to Seattle.”

  “I figured out how you can re-start her.”

  Bane cocked his head, listening to the footsteps of the team upstairs. They sounded like ants scurrying. Really big ants.

  “Great,” he whispered. “What do I do?”

  “Just say to her ‘Wake up, Beloved’. It’ll network her to you instead,” Q-ter whispered back, mimicking Bane.

  “You don’t have to whisper, dumbass. What’s the catch?”

  Q-ter cleared his throat and spoke louder. “She was designed to run as a bride. She won’t function without a male to network to. Her name is Josie, by the way. Congratulations!”

  The door at the end of the hallway shook. Bane cursed Q-ter to hell under his breath and bent over the girl. “Does she have an automated mode?” He didn’t want to have to use it, but it might come in handy to get them out of here.

  He heard Q-ter’s fingers clicking keys, even above the fists pounding the hallway door. “Yeah, just call her by her name and use the word ‘come’.”

  “Are you fucking serious?”

  “The irony is not lost, my friend.”

  Bane clicked the phone off. He threw his hard drives in his pack and scowled. He sounded like a fucking prick when he whispered in her ear, “Wake up, beloved.”

  The girl gasped in a breath. Her eyes darted wildly, up and left, down and right. She focused hard on his face and then started with the eye rolling again.

  Bane didn’t have time to let her adjust. “We have to get out of here. Now! Is there another exit?”

  She shook her head, a hysterical glint shading her expression. Then she swallowed. “You’re Adam now?”

  He hauled Josie to her feet and dragged her, looking for a place to hide. Wordlessly, she pointed to a door tucked behind an angle in the wall. He nodded and pulled her inside a darkened supply room. Gallons of cleaning supplies alternated with formaldehyde along the walls. Buckets of animal feed filled the corners. It smelled like a veterinarian’s office.

  Bane shut the door just as he heard the sound of a sledgehammer being taken to the laboratory’s door.

  Josie’s eyes shot daggers. “Why are you Adam? I don’t want you to be Adam.”

  He shushed her. “Bane.” His whisper came out a snarl. “My name is Bane.”

  She opened her mouth to speak again, but he clamped his hand over her lips. Her breath feathered over his palm, and he could have sworn she sighed. But then she jerked, trying to pull away. Bane tugged her arm and swung her so that he stood behind, with one arm pinning both of hers, and his other hand covering her mouth. “Don’t make me put you under.”

  She stiffened in a move that pushed her ass into his hips, which in turn got him hard as a pipe. Her tiny whimper should have made him feel guilty, but Synaviv’s guys were in the hallway and battle excitement raged under his skin. Bane lowered his lips to her ear, considering rasping something else, perhaps something dirty to shock her and make her squirm a little more. Instead he tightened his grip, not hard enough to hurt but with enough force to warn.

  The girl relaxed into his hold and her breasts settled onto his bare forearm. She leaned back and laid her head on his shoulder and mumbled something against his hand. In a quick move, Josie twisted and thrust her elbow into his solar plexus.

  Air whooshed out from his lungs and he closed his eyes and gritted his teeth to remain silent. With slow determination, Bane gripped the newborn stein’s neck. He brought his face close to hers. The team had passed the door now. It sounded like they were rifling through the lab, likely trying to download everything they could off the scientist’s hardware.

  Her eyes narrowed—a challenge or maybe a dare—and Bane allowed a cruel smile to play at his lips. “Ah, Josie, you are going to make me ‘come’ so hard someday.”

  She gasped in fury, but then her face went slack and her eyes dulled. Josie’s muscles relaxed until she stood placid before him, just another re-animated corpse awaiting its master’s commands.

  “Uh…that’s better.” Ignoring the regret tearing a hole in his already shredded conscience, Bane listened at the door.

  Josie’s muscles screamed with pent-up rage. She struggled to focus her gaze on her new husband’s face, hoping her expression conveyed the depth of her hurt.

  “When I open this door, I want you to run as fast as you can. Will you do that?”

  She dragged her jaw low, forcing her tongue to work. “Noooooo.” Her voice sounded foreign, sickly, frightening to her own ears.

  Bane scrubbed a hand over his face. “Listen, it’s for your own good. I…” He couldn’t seem to look at her, his gaze swinging to the corners and shelves.

  Her breath dragged into her chest, slow and ragged. “Nooooooo.” Josie couldn’t… Couldn’t let this man, who’d she’d hoped for so hard, treat her like a thing. Adam had done that, and it nearly broke her.

  His lips pinched. With guilt? She couldn’t tell. Then Bane crossed his arms and stepped back as far as the tiny room would allow. “All right, fine,” he whispered. “If I let you go free will you run as fast as you can?”

  Her mind shrieked to refuse, but she chose what would give her the best chance at freedom. Josie pinched her eyes and gulped hard on her pride, then nodded.

  “I release you.”

  She let out her breath and lifted her chin, but refused to show the depth of her relief.

  Bane reached for the handle, not giving her a chance to even think. “Head for the stairs and out the front door. Don’t turn around, don’t look at me. I’ll be right behind you. One…” he breathed. “Two…three!”

  The door flew open and Josie ran. She’d planned to head to her room and lock the door once they reached the top, but from behind her, gunfire erupted. Her vision tunneled, her legs pedaled up the staircase. Josie stumbled at the top step and her knee smacked down on the marble floor, but Bane’s arm hooked under her shoulder and hauled her to her feet.

  He shoved her across Adam’s living room, and then gripped her upper arm to haul her outside. All the while, Bane continued firing behind them, not looking where he shot, but hitting his mark every time.

  Cool, fragrant air filled her senses. The heels of her shoes sank into the damp ground with her every step. She ran as fast as she could, her legs burning as she fought to keep Bane’s pace. The forest swirled with life—animals scurried in the underbrush, birds rustled the leaves, waist-high greenery licked at her dress with waterlogged branches.

  The enormous white confection became heavier as she ran, her shoes burned at her heels and toes. She panted, “I can’t… I have to stop…” Bane bent over and grabbed her waist and hauled her up, then set her down immediately. “You wearing anything under that?”

  Josie opened her mouth to answer, but he waved his hand. “Whatever.” Gripping her shoulders, he turned her around and unzipped the back. Bane shoved the dress to the forest floor and ordered, “Ditch the shoes too. They’ll only slow you down.”

  Too frightened to argue, Josie bent over to tilt her shoes off then stepped out of the pile of dress. When she rounded on Bane, his desperate expression forced her to step back and consider running the other way.

  “Damn, babe.” He rip
ped his shirt over his head. The muscles of his arms and abdomen rippled as he bunched the cloth in his fists. More gently than she would have thought, he put it over her head. Josie fed her arms through the holes and the scent of man and sweat clung to the garment, as did the heat of his body. Josie wanted to roll around in the cloth like a cat in the sun.

  Bane snatched her around the waist and tossed her over his shoulder. Then he ran full-steam through the woods.

  It was beyond uncomfortable. Josie tensed her abdomen at his every stride, but his movements battered her stomach. Though the shirt fell to her thighs while she stood, in this position it failed to cover the cleft of her rear end. Misty air cooled her exposed flesh. “I can run,” she squeaked. “Let me down.”

  “No time, babe, sorry.” He patted her bottom and she yelped, reaching behind her to slap at his hand. The movement straightened her spine and Bane struggled to keep his grip. A sharp slap landed on her left buttock. “Lie down. We’re almost there.”

  Wincing at her pummeled belly, Josie tried to relax. She rested her cheek, then her chin on the curve of Bane’s back and considered at what point she should raise her hand to smack the taut behind flexing in her line of view.

  The trees cleared and Josie smelled salt. “Let! Me! Down!”

  To her surprise, Bane did as she said and dropped her to her feet. He turned to stride away, so she swung hard and landed a stinging slap on the seat of his trousers. He only spared her a glance and a snort before walking away. “That there is a ‘dock’ and that’s a ‘boat’, you walk down one to get the other.”

  “I knew that!” she shouted after him, though she filed the information away in her memory. The boat was small, maybe a little over twenty feet long, and had an enclosed cabin and a rear section covered with plastic and awnings.