Serafina and the Virtual Man

CHAPTER Thirteen



“Did you get all that?” Sera asked Blair as they walked along the gallery from the testing lab to the stairs.

“Well, no. I heard your thoughts but not the responses of the others. And although I could see you and Jilly walking around, I couldn’t see this Adam.”

“Didn’t you even feel his presence?” Sera asked. “Like a spirit? Like a fellow dead person?”

“No. If he’s really in that machine, it hides him pretty effectively. What did you think?”

“That he’s bloody attractive for a computer program. Plus he knows things he shouldn’t, since they happened after his program was developed.”

Blair scowled at her. He probably didn’t like the “attractive” comment, she thought smugly. It wouldn’t do him any harm to know she could still appreciate other men.

“On the other hand, I couldn’t feel him,” Sera admitted. “Except physically. He was solid, all right, but that was my perception, not necessarily his form. I got no sense of his presence, his spirit. I suspect I’m just not psychic in his VR system.”

“So what do you want to do?” Blair asked as they hurried down the stairs.

“Get rid of the poltergeist. It’s what they paid me for, and it’s muddying the waters of everything else. It’s not as if we can learn anything from it.”

“Okay, pick a spot, and I’ll clear off until it forms.”

It was tempting to choose the spare bedroom, since it was clearly the poltergeist’s favourite place to trash. However, even with Blair there, it was just too damned dangerous with all those spiky bits of rubbish lying around. One flying shard of wood in the wrong place and both she and Blair could be history. So she led the way to the sitting room where Killearn had been murdered, apparently by Genesis Adam, and sat down on the sofa.

Blair hesitated. “I’ll know when it forms,” he promised her.

“I know you will.”

“Use my energy if you need it. You can still do that.”

“I know.” She just hadn’t had to, not since the pitched vampire battle in Holyrood Park when she’d absorbed and channelled all the supernatural energy she could find to defeat her own father and his bid to take over the world with banking vampires. It sounded laughably comic book now. At the time, it had been terrifying and almost hadn’t worked.

Blair bent and kissed her mouth. “It’s a mean bastard,” he allowed. “But it’s stupid. And I’m meaner.”

She touched his cheek. “No, you’re not.”

“Bloody am,” he said without heat and strolled off, leaving her smiling. A good emotion with which to summon a poltergeist. So she did.

It formed a little more slowly than before, possibly wary of Blair’s echo. She could sense it building in the air, surrounding her with hate and fury and malice. It came to her that this was why it was so strong. Killearn must have been made up largely of qualities like those, with very few saving graces—perhaps none.

It rippled under the rug, corrugating it as it rushed at her, trying to blow over the sofa she sat on. Give it time, she thought ruefully.

Or not. “Blair,” she called telepathically. “It’s here.”

His acknowledgment brushed against her mind, just as the poltergeist rushed at her again, stronger, hurling the sofa backward across the room on its castors.

“Bored, James?” she asked it. “No one to kill in this form? How frustrating for you. But I really can’t see why you’re so pissed off. You go around murdering people, you really have to just take your dumps. Look on that as justice.”

She judged it was all there now, drawn by dislike of the thoughts she was projecting. Good. Blair’s shadow filled the doorway just as the poltergeist took its next rush at her. But she was ready and halted it in its tracks with her own calm energy.

Confusion, or at least more confusion than before, radiated from it. She was aware of Blair strolling into the room, felt the poltergeist’s surge of fear and revulsion as it registered his presence. Not only that, something like envy was in the mix, perhaps because Blair was dead and yet still moved around as if he were alive. Was that the source of spirits’ fear and dislike of vampires? Or was it just as she’d originally imagined when she first met Blair, that vampires simply weren’t natural?

Whatever, she couldn’t think of that now. She had to concentrate, not just on slowing the poltergeist down but forcing it to disperse, and that needed all her focus, all her energy. As soon as she began, it seemed to know, to feel what she was doing. It huffed at her in defiance, then rushed toward the far wall which was, of course, no barrier to it. It didn’t need doors.

But Blair was at least as aware of it as she was. And he was faster. The air in the room seemed to whirl like a small tornado as the poltergeist pulled itself up short to avoid the sudden, solid object of Blair.

Blair’s method of dispersal was different from hers. He just told it telepathically to f*ck off, and the thing actually seemed to cringe. Certainly it blasted back toward her as she continued to force its particles apart. She’d never encountered a paranormal being that so repelled her, and it was all she could do to hold her ground and concentrate. She stood in its way, and every time it tried to escape, Blair was there before it. It even tried to de-form, to vanish into the atmosphere where it normally lurked in the hours of daylight, but Sera wouldn’t let it. She needed it to stay put to blast it into hell or whatever afterlife was prepared to accommodate it.

But its fury increased with its panic, and it fought her all the way, refusing to give up. Which was no doubt why Adam had had to kill Killearn in the first place. The arsehole just didn’t know when he was beaten.

And he was. She could feel it now. It backed much more slowly toward Blair, a rippling of malevolent air. Sera gathered her strength for the final attack. And a shadow moved beside Blair.

Barely seen, barely even there for the tiniest instant, its presence chilled her far more than the poltergeist’s. Because it stood behind Blair, and for that tiny instant, her terror for him overcame everything else. Blair’s chill of awareness made it all worse. She gasped, trying to reground herself, and the poltergeist, soaking up her fear like some gleeful sponge, whooshed past her ear and vanished.

Sera stumbled toward Blair. “You saw…?”

“I saw,” he said grimly.

“What does he want? Is he protecting the poltergeist?”

“Of course not. Come on, let’s find it.”

Sera grabbed his arm. “If that’s the Founder, if he’s a vampire, how can he disappear like that? Is it magic?”

“Maybe. Some of it. But basically, he’s just moving faster than you can see. Like I do, only more so.”

Then it surely had to be the Founder himself and no watching servant as Blair had originally implied. Or hoped.

“Is he interfering, Blair? Because it’ll take everything I have to blast this thing.”

Blair was moving out of the sitting room, his eyes darting. “He’s just watching you in action. Your strength will have surprised him.”

“Shite. Is that bad?”

“I don’t know,” Blair said honestly. “Our best bet is to ignore him unless he chooses to introduce himself. Which I don’t think he will. But look on the bright side, if he is still here, he’ll totally freak the poltergeist.”

“Damn it, I don’t want the bloody thing to go back into hiding…” she began in frustration, just as something crashed onto the floor above their heads.

“I don’t think it’s hiding,” Blair observed, running for the front hall and the gallery stairs.

“Which room?” Sera panted as she leapt up the steps two at a time, Blair at her side.

He didn’t need to answer. The door of Dale’s study banged shut twice.

“Ready?” Blair said as they stood on either side of the doorway. She nodded, and Blair shoved the door in with enough force to send him flying across the room.

Dale’s large desk was slammed against the wall. One of the computer monitors was on the floor, another on its face on the desk. Objects—Sera made out several pens, sheaves of paper, books, a calculator, an entire printer, and two small pictures from the wall—flew through the air, hurling themselves in a continuous stream at the open door to the testing lab.

“F*ck,” Sera said wonderingly. “Does it sense Adam in there when we couldn’t?”

“Looks like it. Only why would it suddenly feel him now and not before?”

“And why doesn’t it just go in?” Sera wondered as a picture flew back past her ear and almost immediately forward again, bouncing in through the doorway to shatter on the other side.

“It can’t,” Blair said softly. “It’s tied to the parts of the house it knew when it was alive. Killearn might have cased the rest of the house, but he’d never have got in there.”

“And that’s really hacking it off,” Sera agreed, ducking to avoid the whizzing laptop. “Shit, Dale’s going to be so pissed off about this…”

But the flying objects were slowing. Instead, Sera could actually hear the rushing of air like a howl as the poltergeist threw everything it had at the doorway like some invisible, rhythmically wielded pickax. Worse, the air began to shimmer.

“It’s getting in,” Sera said in panic. “And Jilly’s in there!” God knew what would happen to her if the controls were shattered by the poltergeist.

“Then you’d better get rid of it,” Blair said calmly, walking right through the shimmering air and into the room. “Quickly.”

****



Jilly didn’t want to move. It was weird, but she’d never felt this close to anyone, even Sera. Of course, she and Sera normally kept their clothes on during their infrequent heart-to-hearts, but even in childhood, they’d been so careful of bolstering their own or each other’s pride that secrets were told, sympathy and understanding dispensed, advice given and plans made, all with partial explanations and careful reading between the lines. It was how they’d both got by. With Adam, she felt there was nothing she couldn’t say, nothing she couldn’t hear. Not now that he’d made love to her and given her this exquisite, almost cleansing joy she’d never even imagined before.

Even now, sprawled naked in bed with him, his arms around her, she could feel the throbbing ache inside her, so different from the sheer pain she’d known before that she welcomed it, hugged it to herself like a secret gift.

“So how was that for you, Ms. K?” he drawled.

“Most acceptable, Mr. A.”

He loomed up on his elbow to bend over her. “Just acceptable? I rather had the impression that you liked sex with me.”

Her body heated, flushing her face. She touched his lips with two fingers, then reached up and kissed them. “I did.”

“Good. Because I loved it with you.”

“That’s probably because we’re in a computer program,” she said regretfully.

“Oh no. You did everything you wanted to. That’s what made it so good.”

She couldn’t help smiling. “Really?” Another thought hit her. “So anyone who came into the lab in the real world would have seen me wriggling and grinding and screaming?”

“Some of it,” he admitted. “But since it’s all going on in your brain, your body doesn’t have time to make all the movements. The brain seems to adjust to that, and the longer you’re in VR, the less obvious movements you seem to make in reality.”

She frowned. “And would we really have had sex?”

“You mean, if we were both alive, entered the VR together, and had sex there, would we be having sex in the real world too? I suspect we’d do a bit of bumping and grinding together but only with our clothes on. The clothes we took off weren’t real; the actuality of sex was in our minds.”

“Then we haven’t really done it?”

His eyes scanned hers. “Does that bother you? Do you want to have done it?”

She nodded, throwing her arms around his neck, burying her face in his shoulder. Even in the real world, he wasn’t real; he was a spirit in a computer program, but she wouldn’t think of that while he held her so strongly, rocking her. “We did it,” he murmured through her hair. “If we felt it, we did it. And we’ll always have it.”

Jilly laughed a little shakily into his shoulder. “Do I get a badge? ‘I f*cked Genesis Adam’?”

“No. You can have one that says ‘I f*cked Genesis Adam twice.’”

Her breath caught. She took her face out of his shoulder, and he kissed her mouth with exciting thoroughness.

“Only this time I’m going to do you in the bath,” he said, grinning. “Come on.” He slid off the bed and pulled her with him. Hand in hand, they walked naked into the opulent en suite bathroom. Part of Jilly was stunned that she could do this so easily. Somewhere in the sexual interlude, she seemed to have lost the self-consciousness that was so much part of her. And of course, there was the heady distraction of Adam at her side, long and lean, muscle and sinew rippling gently as he walked, his naked hip brushing against her hand.

The bath was huge with gold-plated fittings, and the sight of Adam’s sexy backside bending over it as he turned on the taps was enough to make her mouth dry and elsewhere decidedly damp. But he didn’t wait for the bath to fill. He climbed in and drew her with him, sinking down into the shallow, splashing water with her in his lap, facing him.

“Hey, there’s plenty of room,” she said breathlessly.

“Yes, but this way, no one has to sit on the plug.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that.” She gasped as he shifted her legs so that she straddled him and the head of his hardening cock nudged against her entrance. She gazed at him, then deliberately reached down and adjusted her position and his. He slid just a little inside her.

He wiggled his eyebrows, and she felt him twitch inside her in a teasing sort of way. When she gasped again, he held her by the hips and gave a deliberate thrust that pushed him the rest of the way in.

“That’s better,” he said huskily. “Now we can wash in comfort.”

“Wash,” she repeated with derision while she savoured the feel of him just being there inside her.

“Of course,” he said and splashed water up over her head.

“Agh,” she exclaimed, reacting in kind, and the ensuing water fight was short-lived, for every movement caused a positive cascade of delicious sensations inside her, and his breathing told her he was not unaffected either. In the end, he leaned right into her, paused to kiss her mouth, thus stilling her splashing hand with derisory ease. Then he reached beyond her to the corner of the bath and leaned back again with an elegant crystal bottle in his hand. He poured the pale green liquid into his palms and began to massage it into her wet head.

Which was when she suddenly realised what water and washing really meant. “Shite, I must look like a clown,” she said in dismay, splashing water all over her face and scrubbing to get rid of all the running makeup she was sure must be there. “And then there’ll just be me, with no face…”

He caught her hands in his. “Hey, stop, you’ll get soap in your eyes.”

She blinked at him through the drips, tried to turn her face aside because no one, no one saw her without her war paint. Why had she agreed to the bath? It would spoil everything.

Worse, his face followed hers, insisting on looking right at her. His lips were curved into a smile, and, amazingly, his eyes were still warm. “This is virtual reality, remember? No running mascara here. Besides, you’re beautiful whatever you put on,” he added softly. “I like you best of all like this.”

She shook her head. “No, you don’t,” she managed.

His lips quirked, and he moved suggestively inside her. “I’ve got proof.”

She couldn’t prevent the slightly choked laugh that escaped her. It gave her the courage to meet his gaze.

Slowly, he lifted his hands and began to rub the shampoo into her hair. At the same time, he dropped kisses on her eyelids and cheeks and mouth. After a moment, she twisted to pick up the crystal bottle and poured some shampoo into her own hands before smothering his hair in it too. While they washed each other, he began to move in a gentle, rocking motion that she could only respond to. Gradually, the movements changed to more obvious thrusts. Having soaped his chest, loving the feel of his skin under all the slippery suds, she teasingly turned her attention to her own breasts.

He watched her avidly, especially when she lingered on her nipples. His breath hitched. “Let me rinse that for you,” he murmured and simply held them and caressed them, and then put his mouth to one nipple and sucked hard. Instinctively, she thrust onto him, and the exciting, thrilling push and pull intensified. He held her hips, increasing the speed until orgasm tore her apart for the third time. She fell backward into the water, with Adam on top of her, still pushing into her. The wildly splashing, rolling water seemed like a cocoon, enfolding her body in warm, all-consuming rapture. She held on to his bottom, loving the feel of it bucking and pushing, and then he was still, gazing into her eyes as he came, and nothing she’d ever seen or imagined had ever been so beautiful.

I did that, she thought, awed. I made him come. I gave him that pleasure…

“God, I feel smug,” she whispered, and Adam’s shoulders began to shake.

“Not half as smug as me. Did I drown you?”

“Don’t you have a safety mechanism for that kind of thing?”

“In theory,” he said cautiously. “Not sure it works.”

He shifted his weight off her, easing out of her, and propped himself half sitting against the back of the bath. Jilly twisted around to sprawl between his legs with her back against his chest. She said reluctantly, “I should go back. See if Sera’s dealt with that damned poltergeist.” Except that it was too pleasant lying here, watching his hand lazily knead her breast and feel the slow-building ache of new desire form from the afterglow of what they’d just done.

“You probably should,” he agreed and tugged her head back gently by the hair so that he could kiss her mouth. “Your other lover’s about due to charge in the door and find you with me.”

“Will he mind?” Jilly asked, finding it hard to care.

“I can’t believe he wouldn’t, but I don’t know. One of the teams developed most of this one. But at the very least, it would interrupt my mission.”

She reached behind her to touch his cheek and lifted her face again. “Better save it and get out of here, then.”

“Better had,” he agreed and kissed her. When he lifted his head, they were still in the bath. She smiled and so did he, and they kissed again.

“Maybe,” he said, “if there are no signs of Sera breaking down the door for need of you, I could f*ck you again in the test lab.”

“Quick and dirty on the hard bench?”

“That would work,” he said breathlessly.

“You really want my badge to be impressive, don’t you?”

“Hell, yes.” His hand slid down her stomach and cupped between her legs. She gave a little moan of pleasure. “Or maybe we could fit just one more in here first. I don’t really want to move.”

She stroked the length of his arm down to his hand between her thighs and left it there, holding him to her. “Neither do I,” she whispered. There was another kiss, long and sweet, but his hand remained still on her p-ssy. It was curiously comforting as well as sexy.

“I’ll be good,” he said ruefully. “Try not to look too abandoned. Just in case Sera’s waiting for us.”

“I’ll try,” she said.

There was a pause. He frowned. A loud knock sounded at the hotel room door, making Jilly jump.

“That’ll be your lover, on cue,” Adam said. “Do you think you could try wishing to be somewhere else?”

“I don’t want to be anywhere else,” she admitted.

“Neither do I,” said Adam on the ghost of a laugh. “Which leaves us a bloody big problem getting out of here.”

A second knock sounded at the door, louder and more peremptory. “Madeleine, are you in there?”

“We could just leave him and go back to bed,” Adam suggested.

“Won’t he break the door in?”

“Let him watch.”

“Is there a program for that too? You really are a dirty bastard.”

“It’s up to us. We can do exactly as we like. There’s even a machine gun in the plant pot.”

Jilly began to laugh. “You mean we can shoot our way out?”

“Of course. It’s a computer game.”

“Naked?”

“If you want to.”

She sat up and turned to face him, and his eyes began to sparkle.