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  Elyria’s Ecstasy

  Amber Jayne & Eric Del Carlo

  Elyria is a nightmare world, besieged by the Black Ship and its inhuman Passengers. It is also a world of uninhibited sexuality. Urna and Rune are an elite military unit working for the Lux, the totalitarian dictators who control the planet’s last human stronghold. They share a deep passion, too, bound together by a past neither can clearly remember. When Urna can no longer abide the Lux’s repressive control of his mind, he flees to join a band of rebels. Rune, heartbroken and furious, must hunt him down.

  Virge is a chemist who supplies the drugs that keep the Lux military obedient. When she and her sometime lover Bongo harbor the wayward Urna, she is caught up in a breathless carnal adventure that will lead her into the deadly shadow of the Black Ship itself.

  Elyria’s Ecstasy

  Amber Jayne and Eric Del Carlo

  Chapter One

  There’s vermin in every city.

  Rune, atop the crumbling tower, knew the full truth of this, both the practical and philosophical reality, just as did the male on the dark, decaying streets below. Rune, the Shadowflash, could whisper those very words—There’s vermin in every city—and Urna, the Weapon, would hear. Only Urna’s and no others’ ears. Only Rune’s complement. His second half.

  Then again, he mused, halves were equal.

  If he had made that thought a special, directed whisper, Urna would have heard the bitterness in it. How would he react? With pity, with jeering? Rune didn’t want to imagine it.

  The men were dressed identically, both shrouded head to foot in loose, black fabrics. This was the Unsafe, which meant they were beneath the Black Ship. The ancient city was lit only by the Ship’s vague fungal glow, a kind of radiating gloom so much less loving than sunlight or even firelight. The two males were living extensions of that darkness.

  On a corner of the rooftop, two sets of wings cooled. Rune could still feel the cut of the harness across his shoulders. He flew because they had to fly. It was the only realistic way into the Unsafe for anyone but a salvage gang. Urna, however, seemed to relish the experience, banking about unnecessarily, using too much fuel.

  A gap remained among the cloth strips shrouding Rune’s head. Urna, waiting far below on the cracked pavement, kept his eyes uncovered, naturally. It was different for Rune. Much was different for him, and yet he and Urna were so alike. In build they were similar, almost identical, really, with lithe, muscled bodies and sharp features. There were even similarities in their natures, which, on the surface, appeared so distinct. Urna, the vivacious, the exuberant. Rune, the somber one, the caustic of the matched pair.

  Even so, Rune knew there was bitterness in Urna as well, just as he felt sure of the joy buried somewhere inside himself.

  With a snap of his lean shoulders, he discarded the circular thoughts. They never went anywhere. He concentrated on pressing matters instead, for this was the Unsafe, many miles from the sunlit lands of the Lux, an uncomfortable distance even from the partially shadowed periphery towns where the Guard watched the borders. He needed to be alert. Urna required him for his special senses. Yes, he the Shadowflash was necessary to the Weapon.

  Having indulged this last mordant thought, Rune lifted the final strip of black cloth and settled it snugly over his eyes. Blindness came, and the ceaseless twilight beneath the ever-hovering, always writhing, faintly glowing Black Ship surged into intense life all around him.

  He heard. Smelled. Felt tiny stirrings of what couldn’t be called wind. The air was chill, it always was under-Ship. His senses radiated outward. He heard the slow murmurs of corrosion. He inhaled disturbed dust. He listened to the drips of moisture. He felt the sagging, tired weight of the abandoned city, a city like any other on Elyria, built by and for a people who no longer occupied it. How many had died in the ancient chaos that had come with the Black Ship’s arrival? There was no saying, and if there were, there would be no point in saying it.

  Rune let a cynical smile move beneath the swaddling black cloth enclosing his face. He wasn’t a humorless man. Most people just didn’t appreciate his brand of drollery.

  He opened himself to the Unsafe, heard the vermin as they gathered themselves. Passengers. Yes. The intelligence reports had been right, though he half suspected these were mere guesswork, an excuse to send out the best Shadowflash/Weapon team the Lux had. Urna and Rune were good, very good, and they made their superiors look good. Very good.

  Below came the sharp snap of glass breaking. From the acoustics of the sound, Rune knew the size of the glass, its dimensions—a small square pane, intact until now. Glass meant that this area had not been completely stripped for materials yet. He made a mental note.

  “Motherfuck—” This was Urna, whose boot heel had stepped on the glass. Rune, blindfolded, could hear the rustle of his clothing, the flexing of his trim, hard muscles, even the steady tempo of his heart.

  The two males, both wrapped in black, had winged their way here to fight Passengers. Rune, focusing his tremendous talents of detection, picked out individual targets as they started converging on the place at the foot of the tower, that patch of rough, buckled, weedy asphalt presently occupied by his second self, the Weapon Urna.

  * * * * *

  Urna snatched up what he’d found beneath the splinters of glass, that little square he had unexpectedly stepped on, and tucked the sheet of stiff paper-like material away inside his clothing.

  A Passenger was coming around on Urna’s right, pressed up close to the same building on top of which stood Rune. Shadowflash Rune. Guardian Rune. His sightless-sight. Ever watchful, tuned to Urna in a manner beyond normal human understanding, a connectivity that even that whole fucking array of Lux doctors with their goddamn drugs could never fully figure out. You two have an…affinity, they’d said. Well, no shit. And certainly they’d had no luck in recreating a duo such as theirs, though not from lack of effort.

  Urna grinned. Unlike Rune, he wore a black hood, though the rest of his outfit was the same. He liked the loose fit. It was good for combat.

  “On your right,” said a voice softly, as if speaking just behind his ear. Then it added a bit archly, “I know you already see it.”

  Urna had indeed seen the Passenger but he still appreciated Rune’s warning. Rune could spot the creatures well before they got near him, which still didn’t make this a safe operation, not by any stretch. This was the Unsafe, and unsafe it damn well was.

  The Passenger was inhuman. Tall and thin. Long limbs. Long fingers. Made of a darkness even less substantial-seeming than the fungal glow of the Black Ship. Yet this Passenger coming toward him was quite capable of tangible, frightening noises. Its claws scrambled across the concrete, hoarse breath heaving from its gaping mouth. Those claws were wicked instruments.

  Urna moved on the thing.

  He made it a quick, neat kill, unsheathing the medium-length curve of his sword and leaping in a single fluid motion. The blade bit. The Passenger’s black clammy hide parted. A clawed limb swung but Urna was already under the blow, diving away, pivoting.

  No need for a second slice. The creature dropped. Urna’s teeth remained bared.

  “Grin about it later,” said Rune at his ear. Urna, after all this time together, was used to the idea that his colleague could literally hear him grin, detecting the pull of facial muscles, discerning even from the soaring top of this building the barely audible squeak of enamel coming together. But the Shadowflash was quite right, despite the fact that he could be an insufferable prig. One dead Passenger was nothing to celebrate. Not when these ruins were no doubt full of them. Like cockroaches, there were at least ten for every one immediately noticed.

  They were seriously converging now.
Urna could see and hear their numbers, but Rune, naturally, knew their positions better than he did. In a way this was the Shadowflash’s fight, despite the fact that Urna had the title of Weapon. Without his counterpart, he would still be a being of vastly superior reflexes and combative skills, a kind of mega-warrior. But that wasn’t enough, not against these Passengers. Not against the vile living freight from the Black Ship.

  He spared that Ship a quick glance now, above, always above, wreathing this world, making the vast part of Elyria a place of permanent dusk. Only the lands of the Lux, the Safe, knew sunlight. It was for the Lux that Urna fought.

  As Rune swiftly rattled off the locations of closing targets, Urna at last drew his firearm from its holster. It was polished and oiled, with a long barrel and a good weight. A beautiful weapon…just as he too was a beautiful Weapon, he thought, grinning anew in spite of Rune’s fussy admonition of a moment ago. There was no good reason not to enjoy this, he told himself as he squeezed the trigger. A nearby figure clattered to the gritty, broken pavement. He shot again, and again, and again, each bullet precisely placed, his aim unwavering. He turned one way, pivoted back around, lifted his sword when one of the seemingly mindless attackers got through. It was ballet. He was lethal grace. Rune continued to advise him even as the Passengers kept on coming.

  What the hell were they, these dark monsters? He didn’t know, even after so much close-quarters experience with the creatures. They came from the Ship. They scavenged in the old cities for purposes people theorized endlessly about. They were hostile, even going so far as to raid the border towns surrounding the Safe now and then, to be fought off by the guns of the Guard.

  Or maybe it was the sunlight that kept them out of the Safe. Although that didn’t explain why the Passengers didn’t just attack during the Safe’s night. Something else must be holding them back. What?

  Who knew? Not his problem.

  Urna fired and swiftly reloaded. He swung his curved sword until the blade dripped with ichor. Another cluster of Passengers emerged from out of nowhere, as they tended to do. He turned to deal with the beasts. They were trying to flank him, evidently unaware of the tactical advantage he had. Maybe, though, the clawed creatures weren’t quite so mindless as they seemed. Urna still couldn’t make up his mind about that. But again, it wasn’t his problem.

  His eyes had had plenty of time to adjust to the fungus-phosphorescence of the Shiplight and he could see well enough the outlines of things, crags made of shattered slabs of concrete. Mountains of detritus here. He used the fractured cityscape to his advantage as he moved out from the tower’s base. He knew how to hide and could go motionless if he needed to. But most importantly, with Rune’s aid, he could see the enemy coming. He could beat them at their own game.

  His hood fell back when he moved, his hair a flash of pale silver. The spare, fey lines of his face were revealed as off into the decomposing maze of streets he went, taking the fight to the Passengers, those repugnant raiders of poor, beleaguered Elyria. The face of his world so sorrowful beneath the dark veil of the Black Ship.

  Yet even as he fought, some tiny sliver of his mind remained aware of the thing he’d found underneath the glass he had stepped on, that image he’d glimpsed before tucking the picture swiftly into a pocket. That brief glimpse still resonated within him, awakening things from his unclear past he hadn’t fully realized were sleeping.

  * * * * *

  They paid no mind to Rune. He was still and silent and blind as statuary, blending into the city around him. Besides, he was too high up and the Passengers might even know he was near the wings, though no one could say definitively what kind of reasoning powers the beasts had. Rune had his own ideas, accumulated over many missions into the Unsafe, though he wasn’t eager to share his speculations.

  He was, however, indeed relatively safe up here. The human on the ground was interesting enough to the inhuman occupiers of the ruined city. Urna had been out there in the dark for less than an hour and already he’d killed dozens of them. What good that ultimately did, Rune couldn’t say. There seemed to be an endless supply of Passengers. On operations where he and the Weapon provided cover for the official salvage crews, their purpose was much clearer.

  Still, by mission standards this was another successful operation. And it was also nearing its close. Rune’s senses worked at a radius of roughly one mile, and within that sphere he could accurately pick out movements, could keep absolute track of Urna. Beyond that range things got fuzzy.

  And he wasn’t about to let Urna stray.

  “That’s it,” Rune said, shaping and sending the softly uttered words in such a way that they traveled exclusively to Urna’s ears, many of the ancient crumbling blocks away.

  He heard Urna’s breathing, heavier than a few moments ago. The Weapon was getting tired. “I want to kill one more.” There was a note of petulance in his voice.

  “Too bad,” Rune said sharply, annoyed. He couldn’t deny Urna’s talents, but the man could also be a child sometimes. “Get back here. Now.”

  Urna didn’t answer, but he did turn and start back toward the tower. Rune listened all the way. No more Passengers came after him. Scared off? Living to fight another day? Again, he couldn’t say. Again, nobody could say. The Black Ship and the creatures it had brought to this world remained a vast mystery, even after these hundreds of years. No one even knew how the Passengers disembarked from their Ship. Did they leap, parachute? Were there places deeper into the Unsafe where the Ship actually touched the ground? Maybe they had some kind of materialization transfer system, which would put their technology far beyond that of the Lux.

  Still blindfolded, he drew a glowstick from within the folds of his clothes, stepped to the jagged edge of the roof, and dropped it over. He heard its whistling descent before it landed with a delicate tink on a flat slab of sidewalk.

  “Yeah, I fucking see it,” Urna muttered as he approached the base of the building. The Weapon had quite a vocabulary of vulgarities, some of them garnered from his studies of ancient texts.

  Rune at last permitted himself a small, sly smile as he heard Urna ascending the stairs. Like the Weapon, he too was armed. He paused now to check his firearm, a less grandiose one than Urna’s but just as potentially lethal. Still sightless, he made sure of the instrument’s functionality, smelling the cool, oily metal, feeling the weight of the undischarged bullets. Throughout the course of their many missions into the Unsafe he had only fired this implement twice—and the first time had probably not even been necessary, just a case of beginner’s nerves. The second time had been something else entirely.

  Not that he got anxious anymore, he told himself as he reached up and loosened his blindfold in a single, smooth motion. The fabric fell from his eyes to settle around his neck. He blinked his eyes back into a state of sightfulness, and as he did his other senses faded, resuming a state he guessed was close to human normalcy. It was one more thing he couldn’t be wholly sure of, though. After all, he couldn’t remember a time when he’d been normal. Couldn’t remember much at all of his past, really. The recent years were clear, his time as a Shadowflash to Urna’s Weapon. Yes, that was crystal clear. But before that, only a muddle of vague adolescence, a smear of boyhood, perhaps not even that…

  Urna, the fall of his boots heavy, attained the final crumbling cement stair and stepped out onto the roof. He still had his bloodied sword unsheathed and paused now to shake the black drops of Passenger fluids from it, speckling the rooftop. Rune wondered if it was meant to remind him that he hadn’t participated in the actual killing of the enemy. He didn’t like even the possibility of Urna making fun of him. In fact, the mere thought lit an anger inside him.

  Yet despite it all, he felt glad to see the silver-haired male. Very glad. It was always a relief when he returned unharmed from a mission, though the two of them still had to wing their way back to the Safe. That meant strapping on those harnesses again, firing up the engines, leaping off this tower into the twi
lit air.

  Perhaps that could wait for a little while.

  “You stepped on glass,” Rune said. He didn’t mean it to sound accusatory, but it came out that way nonetheless. With all else that lay between them, there was this too—that tireless contention, a friction that wasn’t quite hostility. Making the statement worse, Rune added, “You should’ve saved it. An intact piece of glass.”

  “I’m not a scavenger,” Urna said curtly. His hand moved as if to touch a pocket within his loose black clothes, then it dropped again to his side. He had wiped his sword and sheathed it. “If the Lux wants glass it can manufacture it itself, or send some dumb bastard salvage crew into someplace like this to look for artifacts.” He waved dismissively.

  He was right, Rune knew. There were others who came to the Unsafe besides official salvaging crews, the Passengers and other Weapon/Shadowflash teams. There were the unofficial human salvagers, the underground, the resistance, those opposed to the rule of the Lux. Mages. Or people who called themselves mages. The very word made Rune’s flesh crawl. The human race had two enemies—the Passengers from the Black Ship and the goddamned mages.

  He grunted a barely audible laugh to himself. Seemed he was picking up some of Urna’s obsolete profanities. Mages, though, were a problem for the Guard, the Lux’s domestic police force.

  “Something funny?” Urna wanted to know. He had taken several steps toward Rune. Dark-blue eyes glinted in the Shiplight.

  The same color as Rune’s eyes. For some reason that sent a tingle across his skin, where a moment before revulsion for the magic-practicing rebels had squirmed. There was no saying sometimes what could raise an excitation in him. This time, it seemed, it was the mere sight of this Weapon’s eyes.

  He said, “I was just trying to imagine something.”

  “What’s that?” A small curl of a smile touched the silver-haired man’s mouth.

  “I was trying to see you as the Shadowflash.”