Page 7 of He is… Creed: Part Two

There is only Addie and the bittersweet taste of her on my lips. I can make her want me again—she already does—but I will never make her trust me again. Which is for the best, I tell myself. Nothing has changed. This place, and my role in it, is proof. No matter what some damn mark on her neck says, I am not the man for Addie. Hell, most days the darkness inside me has me questioning if I’m a man at all.

The elevator dings its arrival, the doors sliding open to Julian’s private corridor, a part of the never-ending expansion of the underground facility. A pair of silver doors, similar to those on the elevator, awaits me. Two armed guards are on either side, both in desert fatigues with machine guns on their shoulders. Neither soldier dares look me in the eye; there’s a class system followed in Zodius, with Julian at the top and humanity below, under his foot.

The guard to the right snatches up the wall phone to call Julian. Before he’s hung up, the doors slide open, and I step into a hallway resembling that of a hotel with doors running down its length. My destination is the door at the end—Julian’s apartment that drips of Upper East Side Manhattan luxury.

Ava appears in the entrance, awaiting my arrival, draping herself over the frame, one hand over her head, her hip seductively cocked. She’s dressed in a sheer white bra and panties, displaying her rounded stomach and full breasts, nipples barely covered. Long red hair draped over her shoulders.

“Creed,” she purrs, a taunting, sexual smile on her red lips despite the fact that she has eyes for no one but Julian. But she always has an agenda rooted in evil; she enjoys luring men into her web and then watching Julian catch them. Look the wrong way at Ava, and you end up in the “coliseum,” Roman style. There, the entire city watches as dozens of Julian’s wolves savage the offender, who does not dare kill one of the prized animals—at least not without further reprisal. The soldier would heal, but not without disgrace and a hell of a lot of pain.

Ava’s a bitch, plain and simple, and when I’m standing in front of her, my eyes on her face, I demand, “Where’s Julian?”

“In the shower,” she says, inching the door open. “I’ll keep you company until he’s out.”

“I’ll wait in the hall,” I say, irritation at her naïve attempts to seduce me, groaning through me. She has no idea I feel nothing for anyone but Addie, but even if I wasn’t lifebonded, I wouldn’t touch her with a ten-foot pole.

She purses her red lips. “What’s the problem, Creed?” she baits. “You afraid you’ll be tempted to actually look at me if you come inside? Or do you simply find me unattractive because I’m pregnant with Julian’s child?”

Such a fucking bitch, but all I offer her is a heavy-lidded, cold stare. “I just want to talk to Julian.”

The door opens fully, and Julian—wearing a navy silk robe, his hair damp—steps behind Ava and smacks her on the ass. “Stop taunting the man. You should know by now that Creed is not going to betray me.”

That shaking sensation I’ve been feeling since leaving Addie fades, and I smile inside with a realization. Ava is Julian’s weakness. She makes him blind and foolish.

Julian tugs Ava around and against him, cupping her head, his lips close to hers. “Not even for you.” He kisses her hard and then sets her away. “Get dressed,” he commands, and already his attention is on me. “Come in.”

I saunter into the apartment filled with black leather and expensive art—stolen art and for no reason that simply wanting it. There are no barriers in our world anymore, at least not where Julian and Ava are concerned. Julian wants. Ava wants. Julian takes. If the bank vaults weren’t air tight, they’d all be emptied already.

Julian sits down on the couch, waving a hand for me to join him, before filling two crystal glasses with brandy. You’d never know the man had been a “Bud” guy only two years before. I like whiskey. I hate brandy, and Julian damn sure knows it. But every time I come here, he pours me a glass. And every time, I ignore it. It’s some sort of test, though I have no fucking clue what he’s trying to prove.

As usual, Julian studies me, willing me to pick up that glass. When I offer him nothing but a deadpan stare, his lips quirk. “Do you know that you’re the only Zodius who would dare to snub my offer of anything?” He seems pleased with this, as if my actions somehow make me worthy of a role as his “second.” Yet anyone else would be beaten for such a refusal.

Julian sets his glass down and spreads his arms across the back of the couch. “Tell me about Addie. I always thought she was one of those preacher’s daughter kinds of fantasies for you. Only it’s the general’s daughter.” His lips twitch. “Did you kiss her broken heart and make it better?”

I have a fantasy all right, the same fantasy I indulge myself in at least once a day, and it does not involve Addie, but rather me slitting his throat and ending all of this. Only it wouldn’t end. Julian has laid out an insurance plan to keep himself alive—a strategy he’s made clear to both the government and the Renegades. Upon his death, the three biological weapons they’d taken from that port years before would be released, followed by a string of random disasters that would escalate around the country.

We should never have allowed him alone with those weapons, and at this point, I can’t take them from him. I know where he’d release them should war break out, but I don’t know where they’re being stored or who’s hiding them. If I did, I’d end this, and Julian, once and for all.

I force myself out of the fantasy in which I kill Julian and back to the conversation. “She’ll be cooperating,” I assure him. “But she’s been kept in the dark on Red Dart. I’ll manipulate her into manipulating her father, and we’ll get what we need.”

“Quickly,” Julian bites out. “Guide her quickly.”

Ava sashays into the room wearing a pink silk robe and drapes herself over Julian’s shoulder. “Did you tell him about the fertility testing?” She doesn’t wait for a response, excitement lifting her voice. “I injected six women with a series of injections created with my pregnancy hormones. Their fertility ranges immediately skyrocketed off the charts. Next step is to pair them with some of the soldiers and see if the hormones make them lifebond compatible.” Ava lavishes the women inside Zodius City with gifts and luxurious living quarters. To her, and Julian, they’re the future mothers of Zodius children. Seventy percent of the nearly one hundred women inside the Silver, Gold, and Twilight Quarters—the female housing units—are brainwashed by the glamour and Ava’s unique ability to mold nearly every female mind she touches. That’s her new superpower—mind control. Only a small percentage of the women are immune to her newly found skill. So much so that, despite the requirement of frequent, rotating sex partners, these women wouldn’t leave if given the chance.

“What Ava failed to mention,” Julian interjects dryly, “is the part where two of the six females she injected have died.”

A muscle in my jaw tics. “Then the injections were premature. We can’t afford to lose fertile women.”

Julian grimaces. “There will be more. And the last thing I need is a bunch of panicked females worried about why women are disappearing.”

“Then we wait until Ava expands her testing,” I press.

“No,” Julian states. “I want them all injected now, and we’ll deal with the fallout and be done with it all at once. There’s no reason to wait.”

Ice slides down my spine. This is where the buck stopped, where I exit Zodius and I take those women with me. And that means tonight, before it’s too late to save them. And since we now know that any woman who has had sex with a GTECH develops a psychic energy that could be traced by our trackers while above ground, I may well be setting us all up for a death wish.

Ava curls up to Julian’s side but focuses on me. “We’ll need more women, Creed. You’ll need to send a team out hunting.”

Julian’s lips curve. “If you didn’t have to attend to the needs of Addie, I’d say the two of us could take the wolves out hunting for prospects. It would be an interesting diversion. I love to watch their faces when the wolves go at them, and then we save the day by rescuing them.” He laughs. “Priceless. They come willingly. We are their heroes.”

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