Deceived Read online

  Anna watched in stunned silence as the enormous member began to shrivel in on itself, growing smaller and smaller until it was no bigger than her pinkie finger.

  For a moment Gorn didn’t seem to know what had happened. Both heads stared stupidly between his legs, where the tiny member wiggled like a gray maggot between his tree-trunk thighs.

  Then the left head howled, “What? No! No—my shaft!”

  “Stupid girl—see what she did to us!” the right head raged. “I told you not to buy her! I told you she was no good!”

  Both arms reached for her at once and Anna could see murderous intent in both the left and the right head’s eyes.

  Taking aim again, she pointed the gun at the right head and squeezed the black trigger.

  A red ray came from the gun this time, enveloping the entire head in a ruby glow for a long instant.

  Anna had expected to see the head shrivel up, like Gorn’s shaft had. Instead, the greasy black top-knot of hair between its horns turned first gray, then white. At the same time, the right head began to change. Wrinkles grew on its cheeks and around its eyes and then deepened into furrows as its features sagged. Its red eyes grew cloudy as though cataracts were growing over them, impeding their vision.

  “Stupid girl,” the right head rasped through wrinkled lips. “Look what you did…you…” But the words dissolved into mush as its teeth began to fall out, pattering to the kitchen floor like ugly yellow-brown raindrops.

  Anna was horrified, but the right head no longer seemed to know what was happening to it. It babbled nonsense in a hoarse, whispery voice and looked around blindly, as though wondering where it was. Anna didn’t know what a hundred-year-old Trollox looked like, but she thought this might be it. Somehow the red blast from the pistol had aged the right head so drastically it was senile and almost dead.

  The left head had been watching this happen with horror growing on its lumpish features. It turned to Anna, its yellow eyes blazing with rage.

  “You little bitch!” it roared. “Look what you did to us! Look what you did!”

  Anna shrank back. Gorn’s cock might be tiny and his right head shriveled, but his body was still big and strong and he could break her neck with one massive hand.

  As Gorn leaned towards her, the teeth of his left head bared in fury, she shot for the third time, this time with the white trigger.

  As had happened when she shot his shaft, a blue beam pulsed out and enveloped the left head. Nothing happened for a moment…and then everything happened at once.

  This transformation was even faster than the extreme aging of the right head. Suddenly, the left head began to shrink and the rough whiskers that sprouted around its tusks grew shorter and then disappeared altogether. Its features started looking younger and softer—more babyish by the second.

  “Anna! Anna, are you all right? Get off her you big bastard!”

  Dark came rushing into the kitchen, a gun-type weapon clutched in one hand. He grabbed Gorn by one broad shoulder and spun the huge Trollox around.

  “You leave her alone, you son of a bitch! She’s mine now and I’ll kill you if you…”

  His words trailed off and his eyes, which had turned pure red with fury, slowly regained their normal bronze color.

  “What in the Seven Hells?” he asked blankly, staring up at the huge Trollox. “What happened to him?” he asked, looking at Anna. “Why does one head look like it’s a thousand years old and the other is a fucking baby?”

  At that point, Gorn sat down on the kitchen floor and began to play with his toes, which were bare and hairy and disgustingly dirty. The left head cooed and giggled and the right one looked around blearily, as though it didn’t know where it was or what was going on.

  “I…I don’t know.” Carefully, Anna edged out from behind the massive Trollox. “I shot him with this—I found it in the trophy room and brought it with me.” She held up the small silver pistol with its white and black triggers.

  “A Synthian aging ray—that’s what he said it was. I couldn’t remember at first,” Dark muttered. “Well, you certainly messed him up, baby. One head’s so old it’ll never remember us and the other’s so young it can’t even talk.”

  “I…I shot him in the dick too,” Anna confessed, her voice trembling. “He…he was trying to breed me.” She shivered, feeling like she was going to be sick just thinking about it.

  “Hey, baby—it’s all right. Everything is going to be all right.” Dark started to enfold her in his arms, then stopped with a grimace. “Uh—I want to give you a hug but I’d better clean up first.”

  For the first time, Anna realized he was spattered all over in bright pink liquid.

  “Oh my God—Replicant blood!” she gasped. “Dark, are you hurt? What happened?”

  She started to reach for him but he shook his head.

  “No, don’t worry—it isn’t mine.”

  “It’s not? Then whose is it?”

  As he walked to the sink to clean up, Dark explained how the three fuck-dolls Gorn had bought had attacked him. Anna went with him, watching anxiously to be certain all the bright pink, Pepto Bismol-looking blood belonged to the Replicants and not to him.

  “So…they attacked you while you were switching out the Shannom-rahs?” she asked, wanting to be sure she got it straight.

  Dark nodded as he swiped at his chest and arms with a damp rag.

  “I had just finished putting the fake one into the microfilament net when the first two jumped me. I think they were possessed by the Knower—the AI I told you about that made them in the first place?”

  “Right.” Anna nodded—he had told her the whole story about why the Kindred needed the Shannom-rah and the strange, evil entity called the Knower that was after it as well.

  “Right,” Dark echoed and sighed. “Anyway, I blasted those two to the Seven Hells and the third attacked right before I heard you scream. But that last one…” He shook his head, frowning. “Well, it just collapsed. I didn’t even have to shoot it—not sure what happened to it.”

  “So there’s Replicant blood and bodies all over the trophy room and I reduced Gorn to an old man-baby with a tiny baby dick.” Anna shook her head and picked up a fresh kitchen towel. She wet it under the faucet and began to dab Dark’s face with it.

  “Yeah, I guess that’s pretty much it.” Dark nodded.

  Anna sighed. “So much for making a clean getaway I guess. Now everyone is going to know this was an inside job and his new drewgs will probably come after us. He invited all of them for a dinner tomorrow night—did you know?”

  Dark frowned. “No, I didn’t. But that only means we’ve got to clean up and get out of here as soon as possible.”

  “Well, good luck getting the Replicant blood out of everything—it really stains,” Anna remarked, dabbing at his cheek, which was smeared with the stuff. “No offense, but it’s true.”

  “None taken,” Dark said dryly.

  “But even if we do get everything cleaned up and the trophy room locked up tight, what do we do about Gorn?” she asked. “Is there a way to undo what the, uh, aging and youthening pistol-thingy did?”

  “I don’t think so,” Dark said grimly. “And we wouldn’t want to anyway—if we were able to restore Gorn to his normal self, he would only be enraged at what we’d done to him in the first place.”

  “You’re right.” She sighed. “So then…what are we going to do? How can we cover this up?”

  Dark frowned. “I’m thinking…maybe we don’t cover it up at all.”

  “We don’t?” Anna was still dabbing at his face with the towel. She had almost all the bright pink blood off one cheek and was about to start on the other.

  “No, we don’t.” Dark looked thoughtful. “What if we staged it to look like an attack by rogue Replicants?”

  “Rogue Replicants? Are there such a thing?” Anna asked doubtfully.

  “Now there are.” He was beginning to look excited, his bronze eyes flashing. “Look, nobody