Mick (The A'rouk Brothers Book 1) (8 page)

“We have been waiting for you, brother.” The other male said.

The word brother triggered something in his memory. Mick calmed, stopped fighting when he remembered he had brothers, and they would never let anything happen to him. He was safe in the arms of his family.

“That’s right,” the more seductive one whispered. “We’re your family. We take care of those who belong to us. You need to come to us. The one by your side plans to kill you. To take your soul, do not let her.”

He turned his head to look at the female sitting next to him. Who was she?

He ignored her; she was puny, what could she do to him? He was a mighty warrior for the…a warning went off in his head not to say the name of those that created him.

Where were his other brothers? Amethyst eyes appeared before him quickly changing to silver, looking like lightning strikes against the sky. They frowned at him. Warning him? Had he done something wrong? Wasn’t he still part of the family?

“They’re not your family,” the male whispered. “We are your family. We’ve searched for you, centuries have passed and still we searched. Now that we have you, we won’t let you go.

He turned again because the puny female was beating on his chest. Tears were tracking down her face as she cried. She could be beautiful, but the distress on her face was too real for her to be anything but terrified. He could see her mouth moving but couldn’t hear a sound. Why couldn’t he hear her?

He turned back to look at his brothers, unsure of what was happening. Why did he feel like there was a fog inside of his head stealing his memories?

“She’s doing this to you. You must get rid of her, be free.”

He turned and unbuckled the holster holding her in. He would let the puny female go, this way she would no longer distress him. The male that held his attention, he knew him. He was his oldest brother. Mick smiled knowing he would make him proud.

The façade around the male shimmered and broke as if he could no longer hold it in place. Mick screamed when the illusion broke before him, he was looking at Anchil, one of the evilest henchmen of the Army of Darkness.

He came back to his senses as if a cool breeze blew through his mind just in time to see Jaz fall from the hover.

His scream of no followed her.

She was going to die and for some reason, she was calmer than she expected. Maybe it was because no one would be watching with their malice and greed or maybe because some things are inevitable. No, she knew what it was. She was going to die; soon darkness would take her, and she would never know another thing. Mick would live, maybe forever and he would relive her death over and over again. In the end, she was getting the better part of the deal.

She allowed images of him kissing her to play through her mind and lost herself in the bliss that was his arms.

He threw himself out the hover car after her. She was so far ahead; there was no chance of him reaching her before the deadly arms of the Earth welcomed her home forever. His body changed, the particles rearranged until he was blending in with the very air around him. He hurtled like a rocket to Earth, a prayer of please on his lips as he tried to catch up with her.

Then he felt it, power, it flooded his body increasing his speed. His brothers, a small smile, played on his lips; they were banding together and giving him all they had to save his mate. He could feel all of them touching him as she shot faster and faster through the atmosphere. There she was, so close but still too far away.

She was approaching the earth at a dizzying speed. The further down she went the more of a chance for her to hit into a hover; that would be an instant death like hitting the ground. He had to save her. Head down, his body went as thin as it possibly could; he was no longer within the margin of safety but he didn’t care. He passed her and came to a stop inches above the ground. She fell into his arms, and he reversed taking her back in the sky dampening the deadly inertia by reversing it.

“Mick,” she looked at him stars shining brightly in her eyes. Then she looked down. They were so close to the Earth she could have been splattered all over it. Her body finally shook as the fear she held at bay overtook her.

“You saved me.” She buried her head in his neck. Her tears flowed freely, and she had a meltdown in his arms. He held her until it was over.

“You’re okay, Jaz mine.”

“Jaz mine?’

“Because one day you will be mine. You just don’t know it yet.”

She laid her head back down on his shoulder. That sounded just about right to her.

She looked down at the earth. It appeared bruised and scared, and her heart went out to it.

“I didn’t know there were areas under the dome that were this bad.” Nothing was growing in this patch of the earth, it was so black and charred.

“The war wasn’t an easy one and the Earth suffered greatly, but it will recover.”

Her heart ached for what she saw before her. A few of the tears she shed made their way to the ground. Mick began to propel them higher. Not wanting to scare her by simply moving them from one place to another. The ground below greedily absorbed her tears with a sigh of comfort.

“Where are we going?”

“To Damon’s house, I want him to give you a checkup. I need to know you’re fine.” His fingers gripped her tighter. If he had failed, she wouldn’t be in his arms now. She’d be dead, and he’d belong to The Darkness. He could never forget that he caused this.

“You won’t get an argument from me.” If their positions were reversed, she’d be saying the same thing.

“Mick, where is The Darkness?”

“It will regroup and devise another plan to come after me.” There was a good chance of his brothers coming to help now that The Darkness had made its next move.

He took them through the levels slowly. They passed hovers; she watched the people inside, but no one could see her.

“Are we invisible?”

“We are; would you like me to take the shield away?”

She shook her head against his neck. She was fine with the fact that no one could see her.

“What about the hover?”

“One of my brothers will retrieve it for me.” She nodded and closed her eyes knowing he would let her know when they got there.

The air up here was incredible. Why hadn’t she noticed it the first time she came? Mick was setting them down on a path surrounded by beautiful flowers.

“Are we at Damon’s?”

“We are. His house is over there.” He pointed to the right, and a huge house came into view. It was one story and seemed to expand far as the eye could see.

There was a beautiful waterfall that skipped gladly down the side of a mountain and made her mouth curl up in joy just to see it. She already loved coming to this level. Everything up here seemed so alive.

“All of these flowers can’t be native to the earth.” She was looking at one with a blood-red stem and an orange bloom.

“The flower you’re looking at is from our native planet. We decided to bring some of the beauty we thought we might miss when we left. In Damon’s yard, you will find flowers for the beauty of it as well as flowers that serve a medical purpose. We also have a collection of flowers that were in danger of dying out on their natural planet but thrive here.”

“Is that why the mountain and waterfall are here?”

“When we designed our homes, we took the things we loved about the Earth and made sure they were able to thrive this far up.”

He placed his hand on her arm and gently led her to the front door. He tapped on it and then entered.

“Damon?” He used the house-wide intercom system.

“Come to the medical wing.” Damon’s voice came out of the wall next to them making Jaz jump as she looked for him.

They walked down the hallways that seemed to flow from one to another.

“How do you find anything with the intersecting hallways?”

“There’s a pattern to them that you won’t see unless we teach you. Once you learn the pattern, you won’t ever get lost.”

“I’m going to need that lesson,” she said before they stopped in front of a door. The door slid open, and she no longer felt like she was in a home. It looked more like a huge medbay.

“Welcome to my medical wing.” Damon was dressed casually in jeans and a tee over which he wore a white medical jacket.

“Thanks for being willing to treat me.” Jaz knew he was a very famous doctor. There was research with his name on it that saved millions of lives. She knew all that, and still she tensed a little. Her status as clone meant that very few physicians would willingly treat her.

“You’re welcome.” He frowned at her before indicating the medbed where she should sit. “Why you would think I wouldn’t be willing to treat my brother’s future mate, and my sister, eludes me.”

Right, he didn’t see her as a clone. That would change after he examined her. She hopped up on the medbed and stared at the walls.

“I know they’re yellow, isn’t it great.”

“Why are they yellow?” In all the medical facilities she had ever been in the walls were always white.

“I think white walls are sterile, but the yellow walls are calming, it’s like they are saying calm down everything will be all right.”

She thought about the walls, not sure of what to say so she moved on wondering if he treated Brook already.

“Damon, can you tell me if Brook is all right?”

“She and Ash were in here before you. You only just missed them. They’re going to stay with me until they have a new place to live. That will give me more access to Brook to monitor her. She needs more sleep and a change to her diet, other than that she is healthy.”

“Thank you, I was worried about her.” Jaz bit her lip before speaking up again. “There’s something you should know.”

Damon and Mick turned expectant eyes in her direction.

“Clones have a tracker embedded into their bone; it’s impossible to take out, and it allows my handlers to know where I am every second of the day.”

Damon nodded and pulled out a small handheld scanner that he began to run over her. It only took a few minutes but then he ran it again three more times.

“Jaz, would you please lie back?”

She settled back on the bed while Damon touched some of the controls on top of the bed and started a deep body scan.

“I don’t see any evidence of a tracker in your body.”

“All clones have them.”

“I understand, just lie still and we’ll find out what the deeper body scan tells us.”

He went over to a small workstation he had in the room. Mick followed him over.

“What are you looking at?”

“This is what I have from your mate's scans so far. It’s a pretty thorough genetic picture of who she is. This…” He hit another button, “is a scan of a female clone. The two don’t seem to be comparable, so I pulled a larger sample. These are all female clones. As you can see, each has certain markers that are the same. They almost scream copy, but Jaz doesn’t share these same markers. Also here are the clones with the trackers implanted in the bone. It is unmistakable and here are your mate’s bones. There is no tracker in her body.”

“What’s that?” Mick pointed to a black mass that wasn’t in any of the other clones.

“That’s a problem.”

The scanner buzzed to indicate all the tests Damon ordered were complete. Damon walked over to read the results before he finally looked at Jaz.

“Jaz,” he gave her a calming smile. “I’ve got good news for you and some not so good news.”

“What’s the good news?”

“I ran a thorough scan of your body, and you don’t have a tracker.”

“Are you sure? They track every clone.” How could they have forgotten to place a tracker in her body? If she had known this, she could have slipped out gone to the beach, and watched the tide roll in. She could have, but she wouldn’t have. She was brainwashed to follow the rules at all times even if the rules were against her.

“I don’t know how they missed you. It could have been a simple oversight, but whatever it is, you don’t have a tracker in you.”

She took a deep breath and smiled the joy that she couldn’t be tracked was making her stomach dance. No one knew where she was, but more importantly, she wasn’t putting Mick in jeopardy, that worry had been in the back of her mind.

“What’s wrong?” It suddenly dawned on her that he said there was some not so good news.

“Seems that whoever did your cloning added a nasty little virus.”

Her mind whirled taking it all in. She might work in cryogenics, but she spent ample time researching cloning. Cloned DNA could be manipulated before the cloning sequence began. That’s when they would have added or subtracted any genetic defect. Maybe you had an extra gene you didn’t want or carried the markers of diseases like Crohn's, Down’s Syndrome or any multitude of others. They could all be eradicated in the cloning process.

In the beginning, the thought was to transfer the mind of the Original into the clone so they could have an unparalleled lifespan. The backlash of such thinking was severe and those who could afford such a thing didn’t want to be exiled by their peers. They dropped that plan but genetic alteration was happening in the medical community, there was no reason to tell the population about it.

“What did they do to me?”

“You have a nasty little virus in your system that was uploaded to begin spreading if and when you were called in to be harvested. It doesn’t matter whether you flee or not, your death is imminent.”

“All that soul searching for nothing. They knew I would never get away from them.” She eased back on the bed and looked at the yellow ceiling. Damon had a point; the yellow made her feel slightly tranquil as opposed to the white that would have made her feel sterile, uncared for.

“How much time do I have?”

“Approximately forty-eight hours if not treated.” He stressed the last three words, but she didn’t hear him.

Mick reached down and took her hand into his shaking one. How could he have just found her only to lose her? Every dream he was beginning to have went up in smoke as he leaned over and held her tightly to his body.