“Something… funny…?” I asked between breaths.

  “No, no. Exactly what the doctor ordered,” Sakurai said, pulling her legs up as she continued to lay on her back.

  Seeing how she was doing this, I frowned. “You buy into the prophecy then, too?”

  “Not sure if I do or not,” she said. “But if there’s a chance, I figure I’ll do my part. Even if not, do you understand how hard it is for us to get pregnant? If I have a shot at having a child, whether it’s for this grand plan or not, I’m going to grab that chance with both hands.”

  “Keep it up, you two,” Threed said, standing and slapping my ass as she moved for her clothes. “Damn, that was hot.”

  I debated for a moment, then moved over to her. “You… you were okay with that? I mean, you didn’t feel left out?”

  “Sugar, you’re too sweet.” She bit her lip and gave my cock a caress that sent an aftershock through my body. “Some gals might care. Me? Give me a show like that any day of the week. As long as I still get mine from time to time, I’m good.”

  “I could try… right now,” I said, though knew that wasn’t likely.

  She could tell, because she spared me the attempt by saying, “My clit’s had as much stimulation as it can get for the next few minutes. But next time you want a ‘bathroom break,’ you let me know.”

  I laughed and went back to find my clothes, then dressed along with them.

  “Killing bad guys, saving the world, and fucking like that?” Sakurai pulled up her skirt, now back to being fully clothed. “I could get used to this lifestyle.”

  “What happens when all of the bad guys are dead?” I asked.

  “That leaves endless hours to sleep, eat, and fuck,” she replied. “Sounds like the perfect life.”

  “Fucking A,” Threed said.

  “About done?” Sacrada said, and we turned to see her in the doorway. “We could hear at least one of you from the other room, you know. So that you’ll all be embarrassed, I won’t say which one. Let’s get a move on.”

  “You don’t even want to hear how it went?” Sakurai asked, teasingly.

  Sacrada laughed. “I just told you, I heard how it went.”

  “Fine, too shy to admit you want details?” Sakurai winked and leaned in, lowering her voice in a mock whisper. “I’ll fill you in later.”

  “Gross,” Sacrada replied and walked off, but not before I saw the corner of her lips move up in a smile. Yeah, she was curious.

  When we joined the others, there were definite looks of discomfort from them, but the topic quickly changed to the plan. Apparently, we were going to use a combination of power and trickery. The plan started with using Goros as bait, and involved lowering the shield long enough to let one of the Nihilist attackers in. From there, it was largely up to me to get close to a Nihilist at the right moment, at which point Navani would activate the dais of the Citadel and use her location sight with Nyoka to locate our destination.

  Essentially, we’d be hijacking a Nihilist ship, the likes of which none of us had ever seen nor had any idea if we could figure out how to fly. Like during the fight with Goros where contact with them had brought me to their dimension, we hoped this could lead to us using the ship to find our way to them as well.

  Sounded like fun!

  32

  Entering the room where Goros was being held was like entering a used casket. The stench knocked me back, one minute making me think I was dead, the next reminding me of dead rats we’d once discovered in the basement in my childhood home. Navani had an answer for that, dousing him with a bucket of water.

  “Looks like you’re going to come in handy after all,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re going to lead us right to them,” she said. “Then through to the other side.”

  He stared at her, then glanced over at Sacrada and me, there as backup. His eyes darted to something behind me and I turned to see the Blue Lady. At the sight of her, Goros fell back in his chair, his hands starting to smoke in spite of the restraints that Navani insisted would prevent him from using his powers.

  “Keep her away!” he shouted. “Anything, anything but her!”

  It took her a moment longer to process what she saw, and then she was lunging, walls moving apart for her and then rising up to block us from reaching him.

  “Andromida,” he shouted, struggling to get free, but she was on him. She lifted him up with both hands and looked like she was about to eat his face right off when she turned to us.

  “Do you have any idea who this is?”

  “Who we thought it was…” I said, realizing we clearly didn’t know the full picture. At least, I didn’t.

  Navani’s eyes went wide and she sounded distant as she said, “It was him…?”

  “Not him, but his brother. He was definitely involved.”

  “Then we use him as leverage,” I said, trying to come up with anything to keep her from killing him before our plan had gone through. “We use him to get to the brother.”

  “Stick to the plan,” Navani told her, stepping around a section of jagged metal sticking up out of the floor. “The bigger picture—get your revenge, but do it your way and go all the way to the top.”

  The Blue Lady considered us, then Goros. She released him, then gave him a swift kick to the face. He groaned, blood on his lip, but it hadn’t been enough to do more than that.

  “Blue Lady…?” I said, feeling weird addressing her as such. Judging by the look she gave me, it was clear she felt the same way.

  “Andromida,” she replied. “Like the one saved by Perseus, only spelled differently.”

  “Ruler of men,” Navani said. “Or so the legend says. I like it. That was you, I mean before you took on the moniker of the Blue Lady?”

  Andromida nodded, staring at her hands as she clenched and released them over and over. “It’s still me, or is somewhere deep within. All of that changed that day. Everything changed.”

  “You’re a relic,” Goros grumbled. “A shit stain someone forgot to wipe off. Soon you’ll be gone like the rest of ‘em.”

  She didn’t even look his way, just turned to Navani and said, “Mind getting this show on the road?”

  “Gladly,” Navani said, and then pulled Goros up from the floor and shoved him toward the door.

  “What sort of trap is this?” he asked, glancing back.

  “You’ll see,” Navani said, grinning.

  “I won’t do it, whatever this scheme of yours is, I won’t—”

  He stopped talking when his restraints came off and his hands lit up. Someone like him, he wouldn’t stop to think why his powers were given back to him. Instead, he instantly attacked. Navani had been expecting it and threw up her hands for the shields, and when the shield started to fade we could see Goros running. He was heading straight for our ship.

  “Don’t worry, he won’t make it,” Navani said at my look of exasperation.

  “Why?” I asked, then cringed as I saw him hit a barrier and fall back on his ass.

  He was up again in a second, blood streaming down his face from a broken nose, screaming about how he’d kill us all.

  “NOW!” Navani shouted, and pulled me with her to the dais, where I reached out to the glowing crystal structure in the middle. Upon its touch, a series of screens came up around us, and Navani started swiping through. Meanwhile, Sacrada and the others were battling with Goros, but just enough to hold him off.

  “Might want to hurry,” I said, then saw Threed get shot, a hole through her. “No!” I started to move, but Navani grabbed my hand and thrust it back to the crystals. A second glance showed Threed running past me toward the version of her I’d just seen—it had been a replica! I laughed, then watched as Navani made a selection on one of the screens.

  An energy indicator was powering down, and then she said, “We’re vulnerable,” and turned to look up with her blue eyes flaring more than I’d ever seen them light up before. “And… Now!”

  She hit the screen again and the power indicator started recharging.

  “We good?” the Blue Lady asked, appearing at our sides via one of her tunnels. “Because I’d love to kick that son of a bitch’s ass.”

  Navani checked the screens, but her face went pale. “Good, but…”

  “But what?” I asked.

  “I meant to let in one of the Nihilist ships. Two got in.”

  We all turned to the sky, not able to see anything other than what seemed like dark clouds at first. It hit me that what we were seeing was a strange version of the Nihilist ships.

  “Are you sure this was a good idea?” I asked. “I mean, how are we even going to fight those things?”

  “How’d it work before?” Navani looked at me with worry.

  “Just… they hit me with their powers and I was there, with them. I don’t know, it’s like I’m immune to whatever they were trying, because they definitely didn’t expect me showing up like I did.”

  “More than that,” she said with a grin. “I think you have some sort of connection to them—that somehow you can pull yourself to either their dimension or wherever they last came from, assuming they have multiple worlds or dimensions.”

  “Cool. Now explain the no clothes part.”

  She blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “When I was there, my clothes vanished—theirs too.”

  She blinked, seemed to be trying to stifle a laugh, and then shrugged. “It’s possible that going through these gates affects everyone differently, or that certain materials can’t go through. Honestly, I have no idea. You’re telling me that when you fought them you were—”

  “Completely naked, yes.”

  She cocked her head and raised an eyebrow. “I wouldn’t mind seeing that.”

  “Find us some alone time to spar, we can see what happens.”

  “I’d like that.” She turned to the sky, the darkness taking up more of it now. “But first, to deal with that.”

  “You have a plan, I hope?”

  “Of course.” She pulled up one last screen from the dais. “I hope you’re ready for this.” Adjusting the indicators there, she grinned as she added, “You’re about to see what this bad boy can do.”

  Together, we stepped back. The floor started to rumble and, where before it had been simply glowing crystals, that section of the ground rose up until the crystals were part of a small, open pyramid that showed a glowing surface beneath. Light shot out from the surface and into the crystals, creating a beam of light that burst forth and filled the surrounding area.

  “This is the power of the Citadel,” she said. “In the past, reserved for very special occasions. I’d say this counts as one.”

  “If not, what the hell would?”

  “Exactly.” She turned up to watch the descending darkness again, then motioned to the others before adding, “and if this doesn’t give us the powers we need to hunt them back to their world, I don’t know what would.”

  Andromida was the first to reach our side. “You’re sure my target’s there?”

  “I’m sure Nyoka thinks she can track him,” Navani countered. “That’s the best I can do. Once it’s over, you’ll help us?”

  “To the best of my ability,” Andromida said. “Especially if that helps us find out what happened to this Hadrian fellow, and if there’s any way for me to reach Abaddon.”

  Andromida shot up beside me, her powers distorting the air next to me so that it smelled of burnt metal. Parts of the Citadel warped to meet her needs, while she caught me with both arms, pulling me along with her in a strange sort of embrace. For a moment I imagined the two of us spiraling through the air like that, making love as the tunnels took us to our destination. I leaned in, sensing the moment and found myself pitched forward through the open air!

  “Now, lover boy!” she said, moving with her tunnel and cutting metal around the front of the dark shape of the first Nihilist ship. To my horror, I realized she had just thrown me. If this didn’t work, or I missed… would she be there to catch me?

  The others appeared, carried by Sacrada and replicas of her created by Threed. They were with me, Andromida swerving around to snatch up Nyoka too. If this was going to work with all of us, they’d need to be close by.

  Sure enough, they reached me and formed a chain at the moment I made contact, and we were in. Whatever blanket of darkness kept them from being fully in our dimension was gone, or we’d crossed through, and now Andromida was able to plow through the ship, creating a hole and bringing the vessel to a screeching halt.

  We charged in, the Nihilists aboard turning with confusion at the sight of us. Sacrada hit them with a burst of blinding light, followed by her sister’s charging sword and a similar light from the sword that formed a dragon.

  As fast as we had boarded, it was over.

  Or so we thought. The minute I turned back to Andromida, her hands shot up and her eyes narrowed. I spun around to see a flash of movement, an explosion of darkness. Sakurai’s swords moved, Sacrada shot out with light, but this thing still managed to get me, pinning me against the wall with claws that scraped against the armor around my neck, as it moved in as if to bite me.

  I thrust my forearm into its mouth and kicked out its legs. The energy that required didn’t make sense against a normal person or even a super, but this was clearly neither of the two. Its hood fell back to reveal a face of gray, eyes black with slimy teeth trying to bite me. Again I thrust with my forearm, this time spinning and slamming its head against the bulkhead so hard that its teeth snapped. It fell back with shrieks of agony, and that’s when I came in for the kill. One solid sonic boom punch and the bastard’s head exploded.

  Nasty? Damn straight. But at least it was dead. Weird, I thought, that it didn’t use its special powers. And on that note, it looked a bit different from what I’d seen so far. Maybe there were multiple types of these things?

  “Check the ship for more of them,” I said, trying to catch my breath.

  As the others ran off to search, Navani approached. She knelt beside the creature, leaned in and sniffed, then shook her head.

  “What?” I asked.

  “This doesn’t make sense. It’s not like the others I’ve seen…”

  “Maybe on their ships, we see them as they really are?”

  “Or maybe this is the first time we’re learning that they aren’t homogenous, as previously expected.”

  “And the first time learning that vampires are real,” I said with a laugh.

  “Vamp-whats?”

  “You’re not serious? Come on, even I know about those stories. You know, the famous ones by authors like Rice, Anderle, Sloan, Martelle… Holy shit, you… I mean, I figured some of those books would’ve made it over with the colonies.”

  She considered for a moment, then shook her head. “They might have, but the last time I read a book for fun was something about dragon shifters and sex, honestly. It was… different.”

  I laughed. “Okay, well if you ever get a chance. Maybe it would teach you a thing or two about these things.” I looked down at the mess again and turned, trying to find something to clean it with. Navani told me to sit and took care of it for me, but while I was sitting there I realized that of course it wasn’t an actual vampire. I mean, it had the fangs and claws and all, and tried to bite me, but there hadn’t been any need for stakes or garlic or anything like that. And it certainly wasn’t regenerating. At least, by most definitions, this was something else.

  Still, fuck it. I decided it would be more fun to think of these things as vampires. That being the case, I had just become the first actual, real-life vampire slayer ever. My brother would be proud.

  Before long, the vampire was cleaned up and removed, the ship clear.

  “Can you patch us up?” Navani asked the Blue Lady, looking at the hole we’d entered the ship through.

  Andromida lifted her hands, twisting them, and the outside metal began to contort, pulling away, and the fabric of the ship moved back into place—albeit in a twisted, scarred sort of way.

  I glanced back outside toward the Lamb. “Goros?”

  Sacrada shook her head. “I was trying to move him when he was hit. After all that, taken down by his own side… by accident.”

  “Or maybe it wasn’t an accident,” Navani pointed out. “Could be he knew more and we failed to get it out of him.”

  “Yeah, well, we have more relevant stuff to focus on right now,” I said, indicating the window. The second ship veered toward us, a strange communication coming through the channels, but we weren’t taking any chances. Before they had a chance to realize what was happening, Navani had blasted them with a full assault of our new ship’s laser cannons so that the remains went scattering across the Citadel deck below.

  We were in the Nihilist ship, our world fading from us even though we weren’t flying away yet. Turning to see the energy field above the Citadel, all of us gasped at once. Where before we’d seen darkness but caught flashes of light from the attacks, now there was an entire fleet—larger than even the space fleet I was part of back home that terrified enemies in the Milky Way.

  “How…?” was all I could manage.

  “Sit tight,” Navani said, doing her best to figure out the controls—a series of patterns on a holo display. I glanced back to see the others using Citadel bonds to restrict the Nihilist pilot. As the ship lurched forward, she said, “A large portion of our fleet went missing a while back, though many assumed it hit some sort of space rift or was in some other way destroyed. I think we’ve just learned the truth.” She laughed, then added, “I think I’ve got this!”

  Nyoka joined her and the two used their sight powers, circling back into the beam created on the dais.

  “You couldn’t see them because of the nature of the enemy,” I said, awed, “You’re saying those are the ships, stolen by the Nihilists.”

  “Apparently,” Navani growled, and then yelped. “Got it! Nyoka, you with me?”

  “Focused and ready,” the woman replied.

  “NOW!” Navani shouted to me, and I turned to our captive pilot, thrusting my hand onto his face. Shadow flowed from him, but spurted out and around me, merging with the beam from the dais, and then it was like I could see star maps spread out before us, sense Navani and Nyoka looking over them too. Their energy shot across galaxies, focusing, narrowing as they worked to pinpoint our destination.