“Where the hell am I? What’s going on? Where is this? Why is it so dark in here?”
The questions came thick and fast and it was all Reeve could do to keep them from coming out of his host’s mouth.
“It’s all right,” he sent, trying to soothe the other male. “This is all just a bad dream. Better go back to sleep.”
“Back to sleep?” Harryx’s mental voice still sounded slightly dazed.
“Yes, sleep…just sleep,” Reeve sent, hoping desperately it would work.
Then someone stepped on his foot and someone else elbowed him in the ribs.
“Where’s the damn door?” bellowed Grand General Viceroy’s voice. “And what the hell just happened? What’s wrong with the Temporal/Spatial Displacement Device?”
“I assure you Grand General, I’m going to find out,” Dr. Delbokk’s voice replied.
The shouts of confusion and the jostling in the dark had a bad effect on Reeve’s host.
“Hey, what is this?” He was beginning to sound suspicious. “This is no dream! Who are you and what are you doing in my head?”
Reeve didn’t waste time answering or trying to soothe his host back to sleep again. It was useless—Harryx was awake and he was going to stay that way.
Also, from the feel of him, he was one of the strongest hosts Reeve had ever snatched. Every minute from now on was going to be a struggle and he was already weak from being out of his own body for so long. He needed to conserve his energy and use it where it counted—getting Harryx’s body out of the Inner Circle offices and into a ship headed out of Hascion Five’s orbit.
Marshaling his strength, he made his host’s body shove brutally through the milling crowd, not caring who he had to elbow or stomp on to get free. If he could just get in a shuttle and head for the Mother Ship before Harryx kicked him out…He needed to get his host somewhere secure—like locked up in the brig of the Mother Ship. He couldn’t risk him getting loose and going back to Nallah.
“Hey, what are you doing?” Harryx demanded. His mental voice sounded stronger now—filled with fury. “Get out of me—leave me the hell alone.”
Reeve’s seeking fingers found the door handle and he pulled, finding himself once more in the small anteroom. He pushed through another door and was back in the lab proper. He was glad to find it was pitch black too—not a single computer beeped or flashed—clearly the pulses had fried everything, just as he had planned. The only thing he could see was the afterimage of the huge, bright pulse of light the wormhole generator had emitted before it died, still blinking in the back of his eyelids.
If it wasn’t for Nallah, he would have considered his mission complete. The damage was done and it was permanent. Now was the time to leave Harryx and fly back to his own body on the Mother Ship. But if he left now and his host went back to Nallah…
“What about Nallah? What the fuck have you been doing to my wife?”
Apparently his host had heard him—Harryx’s voice in his head was an angry roar. To Reeve’s horror, the other male suddenly began pulling up memories of the past several days.
“No…stop, you bastard!” he protested.
But his protracted absence from his own body had left him too weak to hold control of his host’s body and mind at the same time, and Harryx was growing stronger all the time. Reeve watched helplessly as scenes of his time with Nallah flashed in rapid succession inside his host’s head.
Holding her hand…protecting her from the Punishment Gang—which was no more than a rape gang in Reeve’s estimation…walking home with her…letting her slap him when she was upset…
“You did what? You allowed my wife to strike me?” Harryx’s rage was a towering inferno, as baking hot as the wormhole generator had been before Reeve had put it out permanently.
“How dare you allow a woman to strike me? And what else did you do?”
“Stop it! Those memories aren’t for you! Leave them alone!”
But Reeve was helpless to stop the other male from plundering his recent past. Harryx dug angrily into the last few days, watching as Reeve taught Nallah to touch herself…as he held her close and kissed her…went down on her and tasted her sweet pussy…
At this the rage flared even higher.
“How dare you? You let me lower myself—submit myself to a female!”
“It’s called making love, you son-of-a-bitch,” Reeve snarled back. “As opposed to holding her down and raping her, which was all you ever did. I should have killed your body when I had the chance!”
“Oh, I see…” Harryx’s rage had suddenly turned cold, a freezing hatred so deep it was bottomless. “I see, you care for her. Some might even say you love my Nallah.”
“She’s not your Nallah so keep her name out of your mouth you raping bastard,” Reeve growled. “She’s sweet and kind and innocent and beautiful and you don’t fucking deserve her!”
“Nevertheless, she is mine.” Cold amusement was growing in Harryx’s mental tone. “Though it appears she has betrayed me with you.”
“She thought I was you,” Reeve protested. He was beginning to get a bad feeling about this—a very bad feeling. “She never would have done anything if she’d thought I was another man.”
“Ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking it,” Harryx informed him coolly. “It seems to me my little wife has some sins to atone for. And it appears that the best way to punish you for your interference in my life is to punish her—thoroughly.”
“Don’t you touch her, you son of a bitch!” Reeve struggled with his host but it was no use—Harryx was too strong.
Suddenly he knew what he had to do—he still had control of the body—just barely. He had to alert everyone to what had just happened—had to make Harryx appear to confess to the act of sabotage and espionage he had just committed. That way maybe he would be detained and unable to reach Nallah. He even had the remote still in his pocket to use to prove Harryx’s guilt.
“Grand General Viceroy!” he shouted at the top of Harryx’s voice. “I have something to say—a confession to make!”
“Oh no you don’t!” he heard Harryx snarl and then his host was fighting him tooth and nail, doing his best to kick Reeve out of the body they were sharing.
Grimly, Reeve hung on.
“Grand General!” he shouted again. “I want to tell you—”
One of Harryx’s hands came up and clutched at his throat, cutting off his voice.
Shit! He had lost control of the left side of the body, Reeve realized. He was like a man trying to drive a speeding shuttle with one hand on the steering yoke while half his body hung out the window. At any minute he might lose his grip and go tumbling away, back to where he had come from.
“Grand…General…” he tried to say again but the words came out in a hoarse, choking cough that was nearly unintelligible as Harryx’s left hand tightened further on his throat. To his horror, Reeve realized that the other male was quite willing to choke himself to death if he had to. He didn’t mind dying as long as he thought he was going to take Reeve with him.
Which was a distinct possibility. If he died in his host’s body, Reeve knew his spirit would be snuffed out—unable to get back to his own body back aboard the Mother Ship. Harryx’s threat was not an idle one. Still, he was unwilling to give up.
“What’s this? What’s going on?” the Grand General’s voice came from somewhere near the door and then his face could be seen, bobbing along in the darkness by the light of an artificial lantern—probably battery powered. “What’s going on? What do you want, Parokk?”
“I wanted to tell you—” Reeve began but just then, with a huge mental shove, Harryx pushed him completely out of his body. “Wanted to tell you that I fear this power outage may have affected the entire city,” he went on smoothly. “I have sensitive documents on my home system which must be backed up immediately or they will be lost—Inner Circle documents,” he added.
Viceroy sighed.
“I suppose you’d better go then. There’s nothing much we can do here until we get things up and running again.”
Hovering silently outside his host’s body, in spirit form, Reeve groaned soundlessly.
No, oh no!
He tried to shove his way inside Harryx again but his former host was ready for him. He blocked Reeve as easily as though he was swatting away a fly.
“Thank you, Grand General. Then I’ll be going.”
He gave a salute which was barely visible in the dim light of the artificial lantern and turned to go while Reeve watched helplessly. Though he longed to get back inside Harryx and keep him from getting to Nallah, he knew there was no way.
There was nothing he could do now but get back to his own body aboard the Mother Ship and try to get back here as quickly as possible—before Harryx did something awful to the woman he loved.
Reeve just hoped he wouldn’t be too late.