Shadowglass

I almost felt sorry for him, even if he had killed the guy who really owned that body, as well as the poor fairy on the floor and who knew how many others. I swallowed. “Look. It’s not always an exchange, okay? Sometimes people just do it for fun. Because it feels good. Having someone you don’t know . . . Well, that’s part of the point. You can really let yourself go. No regrets, no after. Just now. Get it?”

His eyes brightened as he studied my hipbones. “So . . . Your power is that Jinxx did not know you?”

“I guess. Kind of.”

He poked at my skirt, dubious. “I do not know you. Show me.”

Dread crept beneath my skin like a prickly rash. “You what?”

“Show me how you tricked him.”

Horrid light dawned. I swallowed cold nausea. “You want me to . . . ?”

He grabbed my hand and kissed it, his lips a warm tingle on my knuckles. “Touch me like you did him. Trick me so I know how it’s done. I must know.”

I tried to yank away, but the rope savaged my wrist and his lips lingered, tasting me, his tongue curling sweetly around my thumb. I struggled, anger flaring. “That’s got to be the worst line I’ve ever heard. Custard mountain, loverboy. In your dreams. No way.”

He did something swift and hard under the table, and my wrist ropes jerked free.

My wings sprang tight and ready before I realized what was happening. I had only a second of freedom, and I wasted it stunned.

He grabbed my hands and jammed them down beside my head, pinning me harder than the ropes and just as effective. My wrists knobbled on the table, bruising in his smooth fingers. His strong chest crushed my breasts, squeezing away my breath. His full mauve lips hovered close to mine. His eyes dazzled me, and that crooning banshee voice twinkled with persuasion.

“Obey. Obey, or I drink. I’ll have your secret one way or the other.”

My blood boiled, searing my veins with electric fury. Heavensent or not, he was just another bully, using brute strength to get his way. If I defied him, he’d drink me, whatever that meant, but it couldn’t be good.

Sacrifice my dignity for safety. Humiliation or pain. Story of my sorry life.

But safety wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. If Andy gave me one thing tonight, he gave me that. And pain didn’t scare me anymore.

Satisfaction licked in my veins like deepest pleasure, and my anger filled me, sexual, stroking me inside like a lover. I jerked my head forward, pressed my forehead into his and grinned at him, defiance blazing in my heart. “Fuck you, Jake from the sky. Show me what you got.”

He grinned back, sharp like a spike in my heart, and mashed his lips onto mine.

Blood, salt, dust. Hard lips dragging on mine, impossibly strong. I couldn’t wrench my head away. His tongue squirmed between my lips, forcing into the gaps between my teeth, levering my mouth open. I clenched my teeth, but he forced my jaw apart, and the jagged edges of his teeth jammed in mine and I couldn’t close my mouth.

Oh, this was worse than Chris’ slimy webbed fingers. My face hurt. My lips sliced open on his teeth, and blood ran into my mouth and down my chin. His tongue raped me, hot muscle scouring my mouth, invading, tasting, searching. I squirmed my throat muscles to avoid him, but he wrapped his tongue around mine and pulled, hard.

The skin inside my mouth stretched horribly, like a sock pulled inside out. Pain seized my throat. I yanked my wrists, but he crunched his fingers tighter, and my bones grated, hot spikes thudding in. Sickness clenched a fireball in my stomach. Perversely I willed it to explode, to splash up into his mouth and taste really bad. Drink this, asshole.

He sucked, a banshee growl rumbling deep in his throat. Suction yanked my tonsils taut, and at last my stomach heaved, the horrid cramp a ferocious delight.

But it wasn’t vomit that came up.

It was something fat and spiky like a hot rambutan, scraping inside my chest with angry claws as he dragged it out of me. It fought, this spiky thing, wriggling like a trapped rat, and ghastly terror watered my guts.

He was drinking me. Whatever fairy strangeness I had, he’d swallow it whole and throw the wrapper away.

A scream swelled my larynx. I fought his awful grip, thrashing my head and my arms and everything else I could move. But he just held me down and forced his tongue in harder.

My desperate cry smothered in his mouth. My jaw wrenched tight. The spiky ball ripped up inside my neck, tearing my throat to stinging shreds. My muscles weakened like melting jelly, and I tried to struggle, but my strength was gone. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see. The sound of my own death screeched like claws on a blackboard in my ears, sharp with cruel mirth and glassy shards of mirror.

But my last desperate rageflame flickered bright. He wouldn’t get me like this. Not without a fight. Mirrorbright courage flashed my muscles with one last defiant spark, and I sucked in a shuddering flower-scented breath through my nose.

Confusion, disbelief, the oppressive silence of his beloved sky. Loneliness, the raw disgust in some dark-haired waif’s blue eyes tearing at his heart. Desperate yearning for squalid sensation he doesn’t recognize or understand. The awestruck realization of helplessness with a demon’s claws embedded in his throat. Solitude. Lust. Fear. Despair.

I exulted, blood rushing fatally from my brain. Just like a stupid little fairy girl, Jake from the sky. Just like the rest of us you despise so eagerly from up there. You’ve fallen to earth, and you’re one of us now. You’ll never win.

For an instant, his grip froze, and he faltered.

And then he flew off me, his teeth jolting away from mine like I’d smacked him upside the head.
Cool air flooded my bruised mouth, the bloodstained taste of freedom. The spiky magicball sprang free with a thrash and a cheeky giggle, and dissolved bubbling in my stomach. I gasped for air. Fresh, delightful dust roughened my torn throat.

Relief washed me with warm droplets. I flopped my aching head to the side, an exhausted smile stinging my torn lips, and that warm relief crackled to ice on my skin.

Jake sprawled panting on his back in the dust, spit and my blood dripping from his lips. A bleeding blue-haired banshee knelt astride his throat, one shiny black-clad knee jammed into his larynx. Her pretty lips stretched in a vicious snarl. A familiar spiked blade shone wickedly in her hand.

My skin quailed. Ash Costello... Chris Cerulli’s girl.

Notes