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Chapter 9
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Zan entered the spacious room that was the kitchen and the first thing Liz heard was,
“I’d do ‘er.”
Smack! The sound of flesh hitting flesh filled the room.
“Ah, Lonnie! Ya knows Iz jest kiddin’, aiight? Baby…Sweets?”
“Ya don’t kid like thet, moron,” Ava smacked her brother upside the head with the wooden spoon she had used to stir the pancake batter, matching him glare for glare as he used both hands to rub the separate spots where his sister and his mate had got him.
Rath scowled at her, sticking his tongue past his hoop lip piercing and waggling another inner piercing at her. Ava scowled back at the skull’s head dancing on her brother’s tongue and flipped both it and Rath off with her beringed finger. Rath’s right eyebrow, and consequently, the silver hoop attached, went straight up and he was about to retaliate when Lonnie hit him in the same spot on his arm as before, bringing his attention back to the more dangerous threat to his continued manliness.
“Ya iz lucky dat’s all ya got. Zan woulda fried ya had he not ‘ad his hands occupied, an Iz not sure I wouldn’a let ‘im!” Lonnie smacked him again for good measure.
She knew that Rath would never betray her now that they were katelau but that still didn’t mean she couldn’t get jealous or perturbed by his offhand remarks.
“Ya means Zan wit ‘is hands occupied is a good thang?” The powerful man threw his hands up to ward off the attacks of both women, Lonnie screeching “Rath!” and Ava grumbling in a disgusted tone, “Men!”
Zan just snorted and shook his head, a chuckle building up that he quickly tamped down into a scowl as his second sent a pleading “Duke!” and look in his direction. Ava was tugging on a couple of the piercings in his left ear while Lonnie punched him in the gut. Hard it looked like, too, and would probably leave a bruise the way he winced as if he were truly in pain.
“Can’t ya handle ya own b’tch and sista, yo?” Zan shrugged with a wicked glint of mischief in his eyes as he came into the room more. “‘Sides, Iz got my hands occupied, wouldn’t wanna disappoint my girl.”
Liz was too busy watching with wide eyes the scene before her from the safety of Zan’s arms, choosing to ignore the profanity and ‘my girl’ comment for the moment. It was surreal, as if she was plunged in an episode of The Twilight Zone. Rath, Lonnie, and Ava standing around the kitchen, goofing off, pissing each other off, and basically…acting like a family.
One of the girls had turned back to the hot pancakes sizzling on the grill, adding more batter to form another pancake as she flipped the finished ones onto a waiting plate already holding a heaping stack. Liz’s stomach gave another rumble, this one of appreciation, at the sight of the cause for all the good smells. She really had gone a long time without eating, and her tummy was now demanding comeuppance.
There were other plates filled to the brim with bacon, eggs, hash browns, and bottles of Tabasco. It was all so homey and plain normal. You’d never see Michael, Isabel, and…the Gerbil act like that. At all. Okay, maybe Max and Isabel would with their parents, and the Gerbil if she had liked humans better, but definitely not Michael. He’d bluster and snipe and act as if the whole thing bored or pissed him off, putting the usual gruff damper on any group activity. If she had thought it strange Zan being dressed the way he was, she was about to enter further into the world of wackiness.
The Michael dupe –Rath- was about as similarly different as Zan was to Max. The former General of the Royal Antarian Armed Forces seemed to share his other’s propensity for heckling and sarcasm, a buff body worked over by a rigorous regime, and long hair. Whereas Michael had let his curl around in whatever mopped up disarray he woke up with, Rath used that long hair to his advantage, actually styling all that length into one major tripped out Mohawk that actually looked good on him.
He was dressed in dark clothing that seemed to be a theme for this set. Heavy black steel toed boots and a heavy silver belt buckle were worn over a pair of baggy black jeans tight enough towards the top she knew she wasn’t the only one going commando, and a deep green, ribbed wife beater (muscle tee – Liz had always hated the other name for it) that showed off his built frame to perfection and brought out the green and gold of his eyes.
His left wrist bore a spiked bondage cuff, and three rings glittered on that hand. The ring finger held a simple band of pure white gold, like a wedding band. The middle finger held a platinum skull with red eyes similar to Zan’s, and the pointer finger was silver with little spikes running along the band. Liz wouldn’t want to be the face that would meet a fist made from that hand.
Zan wasn’t the only one to be inked up: Rath’s right arm bore that familiar four square symbol and that wrist had another set of symbols that were obviously alien in origin. His left arm bore a tribal tattoo of two dragons, twined at the bottom, and facing each other. Each dragon had one wing that stretched outward so it looked like a usual set of wings. His left forearm had a band of what looked like barbed wire or fire around it in varying shades of black, purple, red, and sapphire. Each color glittered as if someone had taken precious jewels, melted them down, and poured them onto his arm.
Lonnie was as beautiful as Isabel had been but whereas the Ice Princess had a glorious sheen of long, golden locks this Vilandra 2.2 had short cropped, brunette hair. Liz had never imagined Isabel to be anything but the blond beauty she had been, but this one, Lonnie, seemed to work it off. Her large, luminous brown eyes were further enhanced and made noticeable by the dark, kohl lining them and the smoky silver of her eyeshadow, and the sultry reddish brown of her lipstick.
Her pants were similar to a set Isabel had, yet the way Lonnie wore them, gave the leather pants more of an edge and sexiness that Isabel had refused to play upon. Tight, low-rise dusty brown leather with tints of red came to rest almost indecently low, helping to show off a wide swath of belly. Her shirt, if you could call it that, was a reddish brown color probably helped along by Czech power to match the pants, and came to stop about a half inch before her belly button. It was a corset style a-line halter that helped give her ample bosom an unnecessary push.
She went into public looking like that? Liz wondered bemusedly.
Her belly button was pierced through with a little star at one end and a slave bead at the other to match the tribal sun surrounding the little indention, the colors reflecting Rath’s armband. Her right arm also bore the foursquare symbol and Liz was starting to sense a theme here. She, too, bore a tattoo on her right wrist, but it was obscured by the two inches of black, red, and brown plastic bracelets lining her arm. Her left ring finger bore a band of white gold with a small cluster of five diamonds set into it. There was a Marquis cut diamond in the middle, with smaller Princess cut diamond chips surrounding it, two on each side.
The ring was totally at odds with the black and silver tipped fingernails, cut or chewed short Liz couldn’t tell from her angle as Zan set her down in a seat by the table. Lonnie snickered at something the other girl said and turned around to address her, so Liz got a great view of her back, spotting the twin dragon tattoo on her lower back facing away from each other and horizontally stretched on their stomachs instead of vertical like on Rath. Speaking of which, the words RATH’S B*TCH were written in script out of the dragons’ tails.
The fourth and final member of the New York crew turned around, finished with making breakfast, and Liz came face to face with the one she had purposely avoided looking at. Liz held back a gasp as she met Ava’s gaze. She had always known that Tess had been pretty, with her wispy white blond hair, porcelain skin, and blue eyes but this version was completely stunning in a despite the street garb.
Her silky hair hung straight and in chunky layers to her chin, each layer either blue, purple, pink, or her natural white blond to form an interesting play of colors. Her eyes seemed to snap out and grip you, an electrifying blue that any guy and possibly some girls could get lost in. But where Tess’s eyes had been phony, bored, and aloof –at least to the humans- there was an underlying strength and sweetness of both spirit and personality that couldn’t be faked. A little glitter of light broke the staring match and Liz could see there was a small nose stud on the left side, the usual foursquare tattoo on her right arm.
She had on a tight, latex halter in blue so dark it was like violet, and a gleaming pleather mini paired with chunky combat boots and a silver belly chain attached to the hoop in her belly button. A heart with tribal fire and wisps surrounded her belly button, and there were some alien symbols curving diagonally on each rib. She had on a short-waisted pleather vest, and cuffs on both her wrists and neck. Three piercings went up the left ear, and four on the other.
Liz swallowed as she realized Ava was just as beautiful as Tess ever had been, both personality and physically.
No, no, nononononono, Liz tried to shut out the screaming in her head and shifted her gaze to the side only to meet Rath’s blatant stare.
It was so like Michael’s knowing look, that look that said he saw and understood every little nuance and detail, that Liz wondered if he could hear the voices screaming in her head and know they were the voices of her friends.
“So…dis yo b’tch, bro?” Rath’s voice spoke up again, eyes holding hers, and Liz suddenly knew it was time.
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