Mick (The A'rouk Brothers Book 1) (7 page)

They stopped when they reached a wall of dirt with a flimsy looking ladder attached to it.

“Are we here?” Brook asked, her brown eyes looked cloudy and her body was trying to sag.

Jaz was worried about her and could see the same concern reflected in both Mick and Ash. She wasn’t sure, but it stood to reason that having a child, which was half alien would take a lot out of you.

“We’re here, Love. We will come out on the other side of our property, but we need to be quiet. Hopefully, their attention is focused on the house giving us time to escape.”

Every eye focused on Ash as heads nodded and waited. He climbed the stairs pushing the heavy grate open overhead. Jaz sighed in relief when it opened without making a sound. It seemed the Created had kept his emergency escape path in great shape; he just hadn’t been thinking of spiders when he had it designed. She decided she could forgive him for that one oversight.

Ash’s upper body appeared in the tunnel as he lay flat on the grass outside. He placed his finger in front of his lips before gesturing to Mick to hand Brook up to him. He picked her up without even flinching and handed her to her mate.

This was not the time, but Jaz was turned on by his display of strength. He turned around and picked her up, giving her a small smile and a wink before handing her up to Ash who put her next to Brook on the ground. Ash moved, and Mick made the jump appearing beside them.

They were all standing by the time Mick reached the surface. Ash took the time to lower the grate to keep anyone from realizing they had escaped. The scene before them was incredible. There were men screaming and hollering as they approached the house trying to put out the fire that engulfed it.

“Are they dead?” someone shouted, and dark laughter followed.

“If they’re not, they will be when we’re through.”

A dark shudder went through her body. It bothered her to know that humanity could be so dark. What had she done, really what had any of them done to deserve what was happening? Was it too much to be left alone so she could enjoy the same life the males around her were enjoying? What had she done to deserve the double standard?

Her arms came around herself, and instead she immersed herself in the present. The air was clean without a hint of dust in it. She breathed deeply, enjoying what she knew could be her last breath.

Mick touched her gently on the shoulder, not wanting to startle her. He pointed towards the barn, and she nodded. They needed to get going before one of the Patron’s men looked back and saw them standing there.

Turning around, she followed behind Brook’s back as she followed Ash. They walked quietly, carefully, not wanting to give themselves away. Ash opened the barn door that was also well oiled, so it didn’t make a sound.

An alarm went up. There was a voice yelling that they were escaping. She looked over her head to see that someone had turned around and caught sight of them.

Their pace picked up as they went into the barn. Even running it would take a while for the men to reach them. The barn was a good distance away from Ash’s home.

She walked in to find at least twenty different hover cars. Ash was wealthier than he let on. Maybe it was because he lived so many years on the Earth that he accumulated so much wealth.

He reached down to pick Brook up and take her to a hover. Her breathing was sounding strained, and she didn’t look like she could stay on her feet much longer. Jaz turned to follow them, but Mick caught her and directed her to another hover.

“We’ll be taking different hovers. It’s safer that way and will make it harder to pin one of us down when they’re looking for the car holding you.

She agreed. There was less chance of Brook’s life being in danger if she wasn’t in the car with her. Mick told her to get in but she couldn’t. She ran to the hover Brook was in and hugged her one more time just in case she never saw her again. Jaz wanted Brook to know just how much her friendship meant to her.

With a watery smile, she ran back to the hover Mick was standing by and climbed in.

“Ash?” Mick called.

“I’m going to blow the structure, but I need them to be a little closer. Make sure you raise your shield.”

Mick nodded. Ash would take some of them out and reduce the chances of them being able to fire at them as they gained altitude.

Ash pushed a button in his hover and the cars that weren’t in use flipped over and slid underground.

The voices were close now, and they tensed up waiting.

“They’re in here, bring the laser pistols.”

Blowing the barn was going to give them a rocky ride and the technique was unproven. If Ash calculated correctly, the structure would blow outwards while the roof went straight up breaking into small enough pieces that they would be able to get the hovers through it.

He waited until he could see a mass of shadows around them before he blew the barn. The structure flew outward catching the men standing close to it about to fire up their weapons.

A quick touch on the instrument panel had the hovers lifting straight off the ground.

Jaz kept her eye on Brook’s hover as it took the lead position. Mick touched the panel again checking the integrity of the shield around them. Laser fire finally came from the Earth only to bounce off the shield. Brook’s hover broke the barrier where they were no longer able to be reached. Jaz looked down at the men on the ground. Were they trying to aim that ship killer at them?

Next, they broke the barrier where they should be safe. She could no longer see the males on the ground. Now all she could do was look at Mick and wonder what was next?

“Are we safe?” She knew safe was a relative term but at that moment she needed just a little reassurance.

“For the moment, the men on the Earth can’t reach us, but we are still being pursued.”

How could she have forgotten the mysterious Darkness? It was easy. She focused on the thing she knew and not on those things that were simply a black shadowy figure in the corner of her mind.

Taking a deep breath, she relaxed into the seat and watched as Mick took them up through the layers of the atmosphere.

They were on the first layer. When man first made his move into the atmosphere, this was where the wealthy lived. Things were different now. This layer housed the people who were just wealthy enough to make it off the ground. No one looked down on you if you lived here but everyone knew you didn’t quite make the cut.

They merged into the next layer of the atmosphere. Here was the warehouse section. No one with a respectable business allowed their goods to sit on the surface of the Earth. There were large buildings up here and massive machines. Jaz never studied how they kept things up in the atmosphere but working on one of those machines would have made her heart beat so fast with fear she was sure she would have died from it. The workers up here had her respect.

The next level was populated with businesses. If you needed something, you could find it here. Mick merged quickly onto the next level that was the gallery level or the shopping level. Galleries spread out for miles over the city appealing to all to come and try the varieties they offered.

Jaz had been in several of the different galleries. Each time it was virtual. If she were actually to step foot in a gallery, they might kill her because of her clone status. She was not allowed to mix with the humans like she was one of them. It always surprised her that there weren’t clone only stores, but no one wanted to cater to clones.

She watched Mick’s hands as he brought them up to the next level. They were once again on a residential level. The traffic was thicker up here. People were trying to get home from whatever their day held. He blended seamlessly with traffic making her feel proud of his skills. She chuckled; she was acting like she taught him to drive.

“Jaz, do you want to drive for a while?”

Was he making fun of her? She was a clone; they weren’t allowed behind the wheel of a hover. A frown molded her lips. It never dawned on her before that society treated her like a second-class citizen, but they did. The rules of what she could and couldn’t do were so tight she began to suffocate. Her head dropped to her knees, and she started trying to control her breaths.

“What’s wrong?” Mick was looking for a place to pull over.

“I’m fine. Please, keep driving.” Her voice was shallow, but she needed to deal with this on her own. Finally, her heart slowed down, and the realization came back to her that she refused to be that person anymore.

She sat back in her seat. “I can’t drive. Clones aren’t allowed to learn.”

“I’ll teach you. There are several unused ranges on the Earth, or I can create a range close to our house. Whatever works better for you.”

The way he treated her made chest ache. He didn’t apologize for the hell she lived through because he didn’t cause it. Instead, he simply offered to rectify what happened in the best way he could. If she made it through everything that was coming after them, she’d take him up on his offer to teach her to drive.

They were now on the upper levels, where the truly wealthy lived in very elaborate homes. The beauty of the area took her breath away. Maybe if this had been last week, she would have wished to be one of the ones living here. After what she went through today, the hell the people on Earth lived in, the fact that the wealthy could send an assassin for her and sleep well at night, leached the beauty out of the homes she was seeing. Right now what she saw was superficial, and she didn’t want any part of it.

Mick took them up another level; it was considered to be the dead level since it was believed to be uninhabitable. Jaz knew from talking to Ash that this was untrue, but they allowed the humans to think that. The level where Mick and his brothers lived was above this one.

She was shocked when she looked out the front window and caught a shadow in front of them.

“Mick?”

“It’s The Darkness; they have been there for a while.”

She shuddered. Couldn’t she get a break at least one night of good sleep before she had to face another threat to her life?

The shadow grew larger until a small black spacecraft was hanging in front of them.

Across the hull of the ship, there was movement. Something she couldn’t name seemed to be slowly crawling over the ship.

“Mick,” her words were getting stuck in her throat choking her as she tried to get them out. “What is that?” came out in a rush.

“Don’t look at the hull of the ship!” Mick was screaming at her, but she didn’t hear him.

Her eyes were wide she couldn’t even blink as she stared at the creature on the hull. It called to her seducing her with words that didn’t make any sense but twisted her soul just the same. It whispered to her of death. A death she craved, wanted above all things. It told her how Mick would kill her by plunging his dagger deep into her chest and eating her heart. He was a killer, and she knew it. Knew she was his next victim. Save yourself, it whispered. Her hand went to the holster that kept her firmly in the seat.

She began to unbuckle herself. Yes, she would kill herself before Mick got a chance. It was the only thing that made sense.

Mick grabbed her jaw and forced her to turn her head even as she fought him, screaming at him for how he treated her. Telling him how she knew he was planning to kill her. He pulled her to him and shielded her eyes in his chest until her rigid body began to relax.

“Jaz? How are you feeling?”

“Strange. What just happened?”

“You were looking at a warship of The Darkness. On the hull is an ancient language so old that it’s thought to be alive, so evil that it can ensnare you as it slithers over the hull. All it takes is a look to be captured for a lifetime.”

“It wanted me to die.”

“It works with The Darkness, channeling its desires.”

“Are we free?”

“No, we’re caught in the field they deployed.”

“Can I look?”

“Yes, but only if you look in the window. Do not look at the hull of the ship.”

“I won’t,” she said it aloud knowing he needed to hear her say the words.

Carefully she turned her head seeing the front of the ship that looked like a futuristic version of a vid screen. The screen went from being totally opaque to lightening enough that she could see the beings in the ship looking at her.

A small whimper escaped her lips before she bit down on her tongue to stop it.

There were two males looking at her. She assumed they were males, though it was hard to tell. There was more bone showing than flesh, although flesh hung from the skeletons almost like they were a bizarre Halloween decoration. One meant to keep children from sleeping at night.

“What happened to them?” she asked him, suddenly grateful they chose to skip eating dinner earlier.

“The Darkness. It beats you until your muscle is hanging off your body barely attached to your bones. That’s how it exposes your soul. Then it demands that you do the one thing you’ve been fighting against. Kill your mate.”

“What happens if you do?” She whispered the question as if the apparitions in the other craft could hear them.

“What you see before you are the results.”

“How does The Darkness take you over? Force you to do something you don’t want to do and why your mate? Why not a mother or a child? It doesn’t make sense.”

“The Darkness doesn’t go after everyone. It targets special males around the galaxy. Males that have been given a special task of protection or to defend, warriors that work for the innocent. These are the beings The Darkness desires to corrupt because their skills are highly coveted by The Darkness.”

He turned to look at her, his blue eyes beginning to burn with the fire of hell. “Someone like me.”

He turned around and stared at the screen of the other craft.

“Mick,” she screamed his name and pulled on him trying to wake him up from whatever trance held him.

“Welcome, brother,” one of the males said to him giving him a smile. His muscle and bones became skin and bones as Mick looked at him, allowing him a glance of what the male used to look like.