Deceived Read online

  Anna watched in stunned silence as the enormous member began to shrivel in on itself, growing smaller and smaller until it was no bigger than her pinkie finger.

  For a moment Gorn didn’t seem to know what had happened. Both heads stared stupidly between his legs, where the tiny member wiggled like a gray maggot between his tree-trunk thighs.

  Then the left head howled, “What? No! No—my shaft!”

  “Stupid girl—see what she did to us!” the right head raged. “I told you not to buy her! I told you she was no good!”

  Both arms reached for her at once and Anna could see murderous intent in both the left and the right head’s eyes.

  Taking aim again, she pointed the gun at the right head and squeezed the black trigger.

  A red ray came from the gun this time, enveloping the entire head in a ruby glow for a long instant.

  Anna had expected to see the head shrivel up, like Gorn’s shaft had. Instead, the greasy black top-knot of hair between its horns turned first gray, then white. At the same time, the right head began to change. Wrinkles grew on its cheeks and around its eyes and then deepened into furrows as its features sagged. Its red eyes grew cloudy as though cataracts were growing over them, impeding their vision.

  “Stupid girl,” the right head rasped through wrinkled lips. “Look what you did…you…” But the words dissolved into mush as its teeth began to fall out, pattering to the kitchen floor like ugly yellow-brown raindrops.

  Anna was horrified, but the right head no longer seemed to know what was happening to it. It babbled nonsense in a hoarse, whispery voice and looked around blindly, as though wondering where it was. Anna didn’t know what a hundred-year-old Trollox looked like, but she thought this might be it. Somehow the red blast from the pistol had aged the right head so drastically it was senile and almost dead.

  The left head had been watching this happen with horror growing on its lumpish features. It turned to Anna, its yellow eyes blazing with rage.

  “You little bitch!” it roared. “Look what you did to us! Look what you did!”

  Anna shrank back. Gorn’s cock might be tiny and his right head shriveled, but his body was still big and strong and he could break her neck with one massive hand.

  As Gorn leaned towards her, the teeth of his left head bared in fury, she shot for the third time, this time with the white trigger.

  As had happened when she shot his shaft, a blue beam pulsed out and enveloped the left head. Nothing happened for a moment…and then everything happened at once.

  This transformation was even faster than the extreme aging of the right head. Suddenly, the left head began to shrink and the rough whiskers that sprouted around its tusks grew shorter and then disappeared altogether. Its features started looking younger and softer—more babyish by the second.

  “Anna! Anna, are you all right? Get off her you big bastard!”

  Dark came rushing into the kitchen, a gun-type weapon clutched in one hand. He grabbed Gorn by one broad shoulder and spun the huge Trollox around.

  “You leave her alone, you son of a bitch! She’s mine now and I’ll kill you if you…”

  His words trailed off and his eyes, which had turned pure red with fury, slowly regained their normal bronze color.

  “What in the Seven Hells?” he asked blankly, staring up at the huge Trollox. “What happened to him?” he asked, looking at Anna. “Why does one head look like it’s a thousand years old and the other is a fucking baby?”

  At that point, Gorn sat down on the kitchen floor and began to play with his toes, which were bare and hairy and disgustingly dirty. The left head cooed and giggled and the right one looked around blearily, as though it didn’t know where it was or what was going on.

  “I…I don’t know.” Carefully, Anna edged out from behind the massive Trollox. “I shot him with this—I found it in the trophy room and brought it with me.” She held up the small silver pistol with its white and black triggers.

  “A Synthian aging ray—that’s what he said it was. I couldn’t remember at first,” Dark muttered. “Well, you certainly messed him up, baby. One head’s so old it’ll never remember us and the other’s so young it can’t even talk.”

  “I…I shot him in the dick too,” Anna confessed, her voice trembling. “He…he was trying to breed me.” She shivered, feeling like she was going to be sick just thinking about it.

  “Hey, baby—it’s all right. Everything is going to be all right.” Dark started to enfold her in his arms, then stopped with a grimace. “Uh—I want to give you a hug but I’d better clean up first.”

  For the first time, Anna realized he was spattered all over in bright pink liquid.

  “Oh my God—Replicant blood!” she gasped. “Dark, are you hurt? What happened?”

  She started to reach for him but he shook his head.

  “No, don’t worry—it isn’t mine.”

  “It’s not? Then whose is it?”

  As he walked to the sink to clean up, Dark explained how the three fuck-dolls Gorn had bought had attacked him. Anna went with him, watching anxiously to be certain all the bright pink, Pepto Bismol-looking blood belonged to the Replicants and not to him.

  “So…they attacked you while you were switching out the Shannom-rahs?” she asked, wanting to be sure she got it straight.

  Dark nodded as he swiped at his chest and arms with a damp rag.

  “I had just finished putting the fake one into the microfilament net when the first two jumped me. I think they were possessed by the Knower—the AI I told you about that made them in the first place?”

  “Right.” Anna nodded—he had told her the whole story about why the Kindred needed the Shannom-rah and the strange, evil entity called the Knower that was after it as well.

  “Right,” Dark echoed and sighed. “Anyway, I blasted those two to the Seven Hells and the third attacked right before I heard you scream. But that last one…” He shook his head, frowning. “Well, it just collapsed. I didn’t even have to shoot it—not sure what happened to it.”

  “So there’s Replicant blood and bodies all over the trophy room and I reduced Gorn to an old man-baby with a tiny baby dick.” Anna shook her head and picked up a fresh kitchen towel. She wet it under the faucet and began to dab Dark’s face with it.

  “Yeah, I guess that’s pretty much it.” Dark nodded.

  Anna sighed. “So much for making a clean getaway I guess. Now everyone is going to know this was an inside job and his new drewgs will probably come after us. He invited all of them for a dinner tomorrow night—did you know?”

  Dark frowned. “No, I didn’t. But that only means we’ve got to clean up and get out of here as soon as possible.”

  “Well, good luck getting the Replicant blood out of everything—it really stains,” Anna remarked, dabbing at his cheek, which was smeared with the stuff. “No offense, but it’s true.”

  “None taken,” Dark said dryly.

  “But even if we do get everything cleaned up and the trophy room locked up tight, what do we do about Gorn?” she asked. “Is there a way to undo what the, uh, aging and youthening pistol-thingy did?”

  “I don’t think so,” Dark said grimly. “And we wouldn’t want to anyway—if we were able to restore Gorn to his normal self, he would only be enraged at what we’d done to him in the first place.”

  “You’re right.” She sighed. “So then…what are we going to do? How can we cover this up?”

  Dark frowned. “I’m thinking…maybe we don’t cover it up at all.”

  “We don’t?” Anna was still dabbing at his face with the towel. She had almost all the bright pink blood off one cheek and was about to start on the other.

  “No, we don’t.” Dark looked thoughtful. “What if we staged it to look like an attack by rogue Replicants?”

  “Rogue Replicants? Are there such a thing?” Anna asked doubtfully.

  “Now there are.” He was beginning to look excited, his bronze eyes flashing. “Look, nobody
knows I’m not a Replicant—an ordinary Replicant, I mean,” he amended quickly. “For all they know, I went crazy and dismembered the other Replicants and incapacitated Gorn just so I could rob him and run off with you.”

  “I see,” Anna said excitedly, dabbing his other cheek faster. “And as long as they don’t tie you to the Kindred, it doesn’t really matter what they think.”

  “That’s right. As long as there’s no blood feud, the High Council won’t care.” He nodded. “Yes, it’s perfect. When Gorn’s new drewgs come in and find him like he is with the trophy room door open and the remains of Replicants all around, they’ll just assume that either I was a rogue Replicant or else that a rival sent me into his house and programmed me to rob him.”

  “That makes sense,” Anna said, still dabbing. Almost all the pink blood was off his face now but he had been wrong, she saw—some of it was his after all. There were three long, bloody furrows down his right cheek that were still caked in the pinkish blood. They must be where one of the female Replicants had scratched him. She wanted to get those cleaned up so his body could heal itself. If Replicants healed, that was—she thought they did.

  Rinsing the towel out under the faucet, she returned to his hurt cheek.

  “Of course,” Dark was saying, “We should probably loot the trophy room to make it look more real. There’s a lot of priceless stuff in there—I think you deserve to take anything you want, baby.”

  “After what Gorn put me through, you mean?” Anna asked and shivered. “He…”

  But the words she’d been going to say suddenly died in her mouth. She had finally cleaned the pink Replicant blood out of the long scratches on Dark’s cheek and now she saw that the ragged furrows were deeper than she’d thought. In fact, they were still bleeding.

  But the blood that began to seep from his freshly cleaned wounds wasn’t bright pink…it was deep, crimson red.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Dark noticed the way her eyes got bigger and her breath got shallower at once.

  “Anna? What is it baby?” He put out a hand to her but Anna dodged away, dropping the rag she’d been using to clean his face.

  “You…you’re not…not a…” She shook her head, seemingly unable to finish the statement.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?” Dark stooped to pick up the towel and glanced at it. What he saw made him curse inwardly. Along with the bright pink Replicant blood, there were smears of crimson—his own blood which was unmistakably humanoid.

  “Dark,” Anna whispered, finally finding her voice. “Why…why do you bleed red instead of pink like every other Replicant I’ve ever seen? Is it because you’re a different model?”

  Her eyes begged him to say yes, that was the only reason he was bleeding red instead of pink but Dark suddenly knew he couldn’t lie anymore. This confrontation had been coming from the moment he had first met her and it couldn’t be put off one minute longer.

  “No, baby,” he said as gently as he could. “I bleed red because of something I should have told you a long time ago—because I’m not really a Replicant.”

  “What?” Her voice shook as she backed away from him. “But you said…you promised…”

  “I know, I know…” Dark blew out a breath and ran a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry I lied to you—more sorry than I can say. But you seemed so afraid whenever you talked about males—real males. I just wanted you to trust me—I didn’t want to scare you.”

  “What about…about what Gorn made you show me that first day you came?” she demanded. “You don’t have a cock so how can you possibly be real?”

  “Actually, I do.” Reaching into his trousers, Dark found the edge of the pseudo-skin shield and tugged at it, pulling it out in one long, dangling piece. He felt like a snake shedding its skin as he held it out for Anna to see. “It covered me,” he explained. “Covered my shaft. Underneath I’m as male as they come.”

  “Oh my God.” Her face got even paler and she stumbled and almost fell as she backed away from him.

  “Anna—” He put out a hand to her but she shied away.

  “Don’t…don’t touch me,” she whispered. “Don’t come near me!”

  Dark felt a mixture of frustration and fear. Had he lost her forever?

  “Just because I’m a real male doesn’t mean I’m going to hurt you like Lazlo did!” he exclaimed. “Just because I’m not a Replicant doesn’t mean I’m not safe to be around!”

  But he seemed to have said the exact wrong thing. With a cry, Anna ran from him, dodging around Gorn, who was still seated on the kitchen floor playing with his toes, and pushing through the swinging metal door that led to the dining room.

  “Anna! Wait!” Dark started to go after her…then pulled himself up short. She was already frightened of him enough—he didn’t need to make it worse by chasing her through the house demanding she talk to him.

  There were things he needed to do before they could go—he had to stage things a bit better and muddy the trail that led to him. He would do everything he could and then go looking for her and coax her into the ship with him. Maybe they could talk on the way back to the Mother Ship.

  If she would listen to him, that was, Dark thought unhappily. He should have told her the truth before. Now the huge lie he’d been building had blown up in his face.

  Gods, what a fucking mess!

  * * * * *

  For the first time in over a week, Anna found herself hiding under the bed. A thought kept playing in her mind over and over and over again.

  He’s real, not a Replicant. Real, not a Replicant…

  And real meant dangerous, at least to her. She wondered how long it would take Dark to show his true colors now that his secret was out of the bag. She couldn’t help thinking of how sweet and kind and courteous Lazlo had been right up until the minute he’d kidnapped her. Then he had turned cruel and ugly and the things he had done to her…

  Anna shivered. She didn’t want to remember that—especially not in connection with Dark.

  He said he loved me, whispered a little voice in her head. He said he wanted to be together forever.

  But Lazlo had said that kind of thing too. He had filled her head with sweet lies and everything was beautiful until the ugly, bitter truth came out.

  Over and over, Anna kept seeing the long piece of tan skin dangling from Dark’s hand, kept hearing him tell her that he did have male equipment after all.

  Male equipment he could hurt her with.

  Be fair, whispered a little voice. He never tried to hurt you with it before and it was there all along.

  But Anna didn’t want to think about that. Didn’t want to think how foolishly vulnerable she’d made herself, cuddling naked with him in bed when at any minute he could have pulled out his shaft and…

  But again, she couldn’t bear to think of it.

  She didn’t know how long she shivered under the bed until she heard a soft rapping at the bedroom door. She didn’t say a word but the door creaked open anyway and she saw Dark’s booted feet standing in the doorway.

  “Anna,” he said in a low voice. “Baby, I know you’re in here. I can smell your fear.”

  The thought that he could smell her out—as Gorn always used to do—made Anna’s stomach clench tight like a fist.

  “Leave me alone,” she said, her voice wavering though she tried to make it strong. “Just leave me alone and go, Dark—if that’s really even your name. You have what you want so just go.”

  “And leave you here?” He knelt by the side of the bed and suddenly his bronze eyes were glowing at her in the dimness beneath the heavy piece of furniture. “You know I can’t do that. You’re not safe here.” He reached for her but Anna flinched away from him.

  “Don’t!”

  “Anna…” He sounded as though he was trying to be patient. “I can’t leave you here—it isn’t safe. You said yourself that Gorn’s new drewgs will be coming tomorrow. What do you think is going to happen when they find you?
You think they’re going to leave you alone?”

  “I don’t know. I guess not,” Anna admitted in a low voice, looking down at her hands.

  “Of course not,” Dark said reasonably. “One of them is going to want you and I can’t let them have you. I have to keep you safe.”

  “You don’t have to do anything for me but take me back home.” Anna ducked out from under the bed and rose.

  Dark rose too, standing across the bed from her, staring at her with something that looked like longing in his dark bronze eyes. But Anna wouldn’t let herself see it.

  “I’ll take you back to the Mother Ship—just like I promised,” he said in a low voice. “Maybe…maybe we can talk on the way.”

  “There’s nothing to say.” Anna looked away from that compelling bronze gaze. “You lied to me.”

  “Only because I didn’t want to scare you—only because I love you,” he said, his deep voice filled with passion. “And you said you loved me too. Are you really telling me you don’t feel anything for me now just because you found out I’m not a Replicant?”

  He took a step towards her but Anna backed away, her heart pounding and her hands clammy.

  “I do feel something for you,” she whispered, her voice breathless with anxiety. “I’m afraid of you. Please don’t come near me!”

  “But Anna—” He shook his head helplessly. “Please…”

  “I loved you because I thought you were safe,” she told him. “You’re not safe now—you never really were. So please, if you really mean me no harm, just take me home and don’t…don’t touch me.”

  “All right.” His face hardened and he took a step back, holding up his hands in a gesture of truce. “I won’t touch you—I swear it.”

  “Thank you.” Anna scooted around him quickly, not wanting to be trapped in a room with him, not daring to be alone with him now that she knew what he was…and wasn’t.

  “Come on.” Dark followed her out at a safe distance and then jerked his head in the direction of the back door. “The ship is all loaded. Let’s go.”

  Anna nodded and followed him silently out of the house where she had been a captive for so many months. How often had she dreamed of leaving Gorn’s house and its awful occupant behind forever? How many times had she imagined how happy she would be to go and never come back?