by Jasmine Walt
We’re laid out on a long table with large sewing machines all around us. It smells like cotton, lavender, and sweat. The table is wet with perspiration. The lighting is dim.
“Yeah,” Kiwi says, clasping her hands around my neck. “This is hot.”
I stare down at her. “This is weird.”
“Just go with it.” She reaches up and kisses me again. I fall into the kiss and decide to listen to her advice.
Kinda stupid to not listen to a woman when she’s about to give you some.
Without taking my lips away from hers, I reach for her shoulders and start to slide her suit down. Once her suit is at her navel, I stop and trace my fingers up and down her arms. Between those fantastic brown tits. From her navel to her throat. She shivers in my grasp.
I like that.
I pull away and press my lips to her neck. She clings tighter to me. Opens her legs and wraps them around me. Her lips part in a moan. I want more of that. I like to hear her enjoying herself.
I kiss down between her breasts. Flick my tongue out across her left nipple as I pinch the right one between my thumb and index finger. She shudders. I continue my journey down her body, kissing my way toward her navel. Her hands shoot out to the edges of the table. I grin as I keep kissing her, down and down, pulling the rest of her suit off as I go past her navel, down the insides of her thighs, toward her ankles.
“Mm, Pike.” She digs her fingers in my hair and pulls.
I grin as I run my lips back up her thighs. My eyes slide closed as I flick her clit with the tip of my tongue.
She bolts upright, and I stumble backward. I narrow my eyes at her. She’s seated, cross legged and covering herself like that Venus painting, only with short hair. I lose concentration, and we’re back in the tank.
“What the hell are you doing?” she says.
I open my mouth and stare at her. I shrug my shoulders. Once. Twice. Three times. No idea what to say.
“I asked you a question!”
I shake my head, then clear my throat. “Um, I was…” I know what I was doing, but the words don’t come easy. “I was… going down on you.”
“What?”
I furrow my eyebrows. I can’t figure out if she’s serious or not. She certainly looks serious, but there’s no way she doesn’t know what I’m talking about. I inch closer to her.
“Um, I was going down on you.” I place my hand at the fold in her legs. “I was kissing you right here, and if you’ll open up, I can do it again.” I wink at her.
She swiftly shakes her head. “No, I don’t want you to.”
That’s a first.
“Um, why?”
“Because it’s weird. Just fuck me like a normal guy.”
I scratch my eyebrow with my pinkie nail. “Um, I assure you that it is normal. And if you’ve never been kissed down there, you’ve been with some lame ass dudes.”
She scowls at me. It only makes me want to eat her up more. I have to laugh.
“Look, cray. Just lay down and let me blow your mind.”
She pouts, a move I’ve never seen on her face, and shakes her head again. With a sigh, I gently push her down by the shoulders. She gives me resistance at first, then eventually allows me to push her back to the floor.
Her body is a taut rubber band. I massage my hands into her legs.
“Relax,” I say as I wrap my arms around her upper thighs.
I glance up at her before I dive and flick my tongue over her clitoris again. She flinches. I smile. Then, I wrap my lips around her and gently suck. Her body tightens even more, then, just as suddenly, she relaxes and lets out a loud moan.
That’s more like it. I alternate between sucking and tongue flicking. In a matter of seconds, she comes in my mouth. As soon as she does, she tries to scoot away from me. I tighten my grip on her thighs. Then I blow on her so she’s not so sensitive, because I want more, and I intend to get more.
As soon as I’m sure she’s ready, I go back to licking her, slow, like a Blow Pop. I don’t want to get to the gum too soon. Gently, I slide one finger deep inside her, then two.
“Oh, Pike! My gods!” Her body raises up into the air like some exorcist shit.
She starts to scream so loud I’m afraid she’ll shatter the armored steel around us. Then I remember that’s more my thing.
I love every second of it. Everything about it. The way she tastes. The way her body contorts with pleasure. The way she hollers my name. The way she shakes like she’s having a spell when she can’t take any more.
Then, and only then, do I pull away. Subtly, I wipe my mouth and smile down at her.
She closes her eyes. “Oh.” Huff. “My.” Huff. “Shiyay.”
I burst into laughter as she wipes sweat from her brow. “What in the hell is a shiyay?”
She shakes her head. Her eyes are glazed over, and she appears bewildered.
“I have no idea. I just know that was amazing.”
I smile. “I love that I can make you feel that way.”
She arches an eyebrow. “You love it?”
I half scowl. “I like it.”
With a half-smile, she climbs into my lap. “Well, I kinda like doing the fury shuffle with you.”
I would have laughed, but she slides herself down onto me and humps the laughter right out of me. We don’t do it like we usually. Hard. Fast. Desperate.
We do it slow. I pull her bang back away from her eyes and peer into them. We fuck deliberately. Feeling her against me in this way makes me shiver. She’s a summer breeze hitting me. I close my eyes and rest my head on her shoulder and make being inside her last as long as possible.
I come hard as hell, and she comes with me. Soon after, I fall asleep and wake up what seems like minutes later with someone kicking me in the back.
26
My eyes snap open, and I look up at blurry surroundings. Juliet stands in the glint of yellow, morning light. I squint up at her.
“What the hell do you want?” I ask.
Under me, Kiwi groans. I glance down at her. It’s only then that I realize we’re still naked, wrapped around each other. I contort my body to shield hers. Seems like the gentlemanly thing to do.
Then, I stare back up at evil bitch. “What?”
She grins and flips that frickin’ hair. “I hope you had a good night, because it’s time to go. I need you two to get dressed. Can you do that for me?”
My eyes narrow. Her expression doesn’t change.
“I’ll wait outside. You have five minutes.” She kneels toward the hatch and places a hand on the handle. “By the way, how’d you enjoy that Ana meal last night? You look well fed.”
Before I can respond, she ducks out of the hatch and I imagine ripping out that hair she’s always flipping, one strand at a time. I press my lips together. It was a shitty comment. I decide to ignore it. Kiwi was right. I have to get this cure to Sadie and find a way to get out from Colonel Jax’s thumb.
Gently, I nudge Kiwi awake. She lets out a groan and stirs. After a few seconds, she sits up and blinks up at me.
“Juliet was just here,” I say. “Time to go.”
She lets out a huge yawn, which I mirror, then nods her head. Together, we get dressed while shooting almost shy looks at one another.
This shit is weird.
It doesn’t feel as uncomfortable as it did, but it’s still weird.
True to her word, Juliet is back inside the tank within five minutes. As she sits in her seat and starts up the tank, I expect Kiwi to take her place beside her. Instead, she straps into the seat beside me. The tank lurches forward, then comes to a sudden stop.
“What is she doing?” Juliet says.
I glance up and notice a figure blocking our passage. My eyes narrow. It’s XJ.
“She wants to talk to me,” I say under my breath.
Juliet turns and stares at me. “How do you know that?”
I shrug as an urgency presses down on me. Without thinking, I undo my harness.
Without looking at her, I mutter, “She needs to talk to me.”
“Make it quick, Pike,” Juliet says. It’s the last thing I hear before I duck outside.
Slowly, I round the tank. XJ saunters over to meet me.
“What is it?” I ask, again, without thinking.
XJ, her face half hidden by her hood, smiles. She gestures me forward with her hand. “Take a little walk with me, siren.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “It’s Pike.”
I don’t know why I’m wary of her. Sirens and witches get along like cornbread and collard greens. But this one, she makes me a little twitchy.
“My apologies, Pike. Come take a little walk with me.”
I frown slightly, but follow her, anyway. It’s not until we’re several feet away from the tank that she says anything.
“First, let me say, I admire your courage. And try not to beat yourself up over Ana.” She stops and looks up at me.
I wince and back away a few inches. Hearing her name sets me on edge. Once again, without thinking I say, “I don’t like the smell of bullshit this early in the morning, so why don’t you just get to what you got up this early to tell me?”
She laughs, which makes me even angrier. I’m an eight year old boy she kicked with a chuckle.
“You’re more powerful and far better a man than you know.” She smiles. It’s a warm, open thing like blankets of sunshine.
It doesn’t make me feel any less uneasy.
“If you think I’m good, you’re one of the less talented witches I’ve meet in my day.”
She shrugs. “I know you dwell on what you were forced to be, instead of what you’ve done to resist it.”
With a sigh, I glance back at the tank, then at her. “Look, I don’t have time for riddles.”
“Ah, yes.” She rubs her hands together. “You have to get on with putting the world right. And that’s sort of what I want to talk to you about.”
I raise my eyebrows, a prompt to go on.
“You must convince Kiwi to reject the knowledge of who killed her sisters.”
My insides tighten. No matter how much I forget about all the bad stuff that’s about to happen, I can’t.
I shake my head. “Why?”
“Because she’ll die once she finds out, and you need her. You need her to travel back to Compound Six and watch after Sadie.”
I don’t ask how she knows about any of this. About Kiwi, about Sadie. Some witches just know things.
“Why do I need her to do that?” I ask, even though I know the answer. It’s why a fate showed herself to me. It’s why I didn’t want to see. To be her victim. It’s what I’ve been dreading since I left Sadie at Compound Six.
I’m not going to make it back.
“I think you know why. You just don’t know that it has to be Kiwi.”
I glance toward my shoes and kick the gravel. “Why?”
“It just does. She’s the only one at that place that truly cares about Sadie’s wellbeing. And Sadie must make it.”
I nod. That we can agree on. She makes it sound like destiny, but for me Sadie has to make it because Sadie has to make it. I can’t imagine a world without her.
“And…”
I look up at her in time to catch her staring intently into my face. “If she knows who kills her sisters, she will not look out for Sadie. Or for anyone. She must never know.”
I raise an eyebrow. “You know who killed her sisters?” My voice comes out hushed, as if I’m afraid furies have super hearing.
She nods. Her face twists into a grave mask.
Dread hits my stomach like some tangible thing. It makes me ache all over.
She nods as if confirming some recurring nightmare.
“You did.” She touches my arm to offer comfort. “You killed them.”
I walk back to the tank on phantom legs. I don’t know how they carry me, but they do. I get back into the tank without remembering going through the hatch. Then, I’m in my harness and we’re rolling forward again.
It all feels like a dream.
An incredibly shitty dream.
Kiwi nudges me and offers a small smile. That tangible dread shoots me in the gut again. “What did she want?”
My mouth gapes open, and I try to think of an answer for her. Finally, I just shrug. “I’ll tell you later.”
She nods, then offers me some crackers from her pack. I force myself to smile and accept them.
We enjoy a dry breakfast together.
I almost choke on mine.
We’re on the road for an hour before I nod off and memories slip in, catching me off guard. They take me before this. Before this tank. Before Compound Six. Before Kiwi. They take me to the beginning of the shit bombs. When I was in hiding with Lorna, a witch that was my best friend and saved my life.
Wisps of memory seep in and out of wrinkled brain passages. They give off smoke. There is a fire. Back then, there was always a fire. They were trying to smoke us out, the descendants, and either kill us or send us to camps.
Later to become known as compounds.
Fire was their chosen weapon. The Enforcers called this purifying. One day I woke up under the smell of heady, black smoke. After cracking open one eye, a plank came crashing to the floor.
The plank was on fire.
I sprung up and darted my eyes around. Smoke was everywhere, from the spitting fire eating its way into the shitty wood of our hideout, I knew they were here.
“Lorna!” I coughed, jumping up to cram all my shit into my duffel bag. “Lorna, we gotta move!”
I’m halfway to the door when a feeling of dread digs into the soles of my feet. I stop dead to rights. The curtains shrivel up in flames. That same fire drives oxygen from the room.
I should have my ass outside. But I don’t. Something grips me inside that burning shit shack. Something magical. Something powerful enough to stop me.
I grind my jaw until it pops. Then, I call her name again.
“Lorna!” Sweat drips into my eyes, stinging them and blurring my vision. “Lorna?” It’s a whisper now, because part of me knows something has happened.
Something terrible I slept through.
When I get the use of my feet back, I turn around. Away from the door, back into the fire. Slowly, I walk toward the back door. It’s awash in flames s puttering tiny orange sparks at me. I cover my face with my free arm to avoid them. Swinging my bag over my shoulder, I throw my leg into the flaming door. Wooden splinters explode outward. Avoiding the fire as much as possible, I duck through the hole.
“Lorna!” I start forward and trip on something. I crash to the ground. Once there, I turn and peer at whatever tripped me up. Orange light casts ghost figures drawn in a child’s hand atop a green tarp. The tarp rises in key areas.
Those lumps let me know someone is under there.
I close my eyes for several seconds. I ignore the sirens crying at me from the distance. Enforcer sirens, not the call of my people, and try to remain still.
As if stillness would undo what I already knew had been done. When I open my eyes, I inch forward on my hands and knees, one arm extended. Taking in a deep breath, I grip the tarp and snap it up into the air.
As it flutters through the air like a fall leaf, I whip my head away from the body and puke up all my insides. When I feel empty, I wipe my mouth on my tattered sleeve and glance back at her, tears stinging my eyes.
Lorna. The toughest witch I’ve ever known. Dead. Her ebony skin turned charcoal and scale-like. Whatever killed a witch as talented as her was good. Not a Muse, but a Spirit of some kind. A dead fucking spirit of some kind.
I’m so in my head that I don’t notice I’m not alone until bright spotlights flood my vision. They hit the wet grass in cones of lights. I glance up, using my hand to block out some of the white glare.
“That’s him,” an unfamiliar, female voice says.
“Take him.”
I stand up and squint through the light, trying to make out any facial features. All I can manage is dark forms wearing even darker clothing.
Two females step forward, smiles on their faces.
I’m well fed, so I know exactly what they are.
Furies.
The same furies that killed Lorna.
I smile, well fed and hungry for revenge. Before they can even think about lashing out at me with their power, I stretch my mouth open and wail.
The two females freeze. Their skin stretches tight over their bones. They start to vibrate, their feet sinking into the damp earth. I wail louder.
The blinding light crashes to the ground. Everyone tries to move, but they are tied down under the weight of my wail. A wail said to shatter a person from the inside out. I hear a plop. Then another, and another. Their blood splatters me, but I don’t stop. More plops, like a horse galloping through mud, reach my ears.
Blood sprays me, the tarp, the side of the house, and the brown grass, until each and every one of them lies dead and liquefied at my feet.
I close my mouth and breathe hard. I wipe the blood from my cheeks. From my forehead. I glance back at Lorna and sigh.
“Sorry, I didn’t wake up, Lo Lo.” That’s what I called her. She usually called me asshole. She was usually right.
I look around for something, a shovel, to bury her. I don’t find one, but I find a spade, which is close enough.
I dig quickly. More of them will be coming now. Lorna had shielded me as long as she could. Then I dropped the ball. Now, they may just be able to find me.
I wind up with a shallow grave. I roll her body into it and cover it up. On top of the moist dirt, I trace Here lies Lo Lo, the baddest ass witch I’ve ever known. Yours, Asshole.
I want to smile, but my muscles stay paralyzed under the weight of grief. This would have made her grin. But she can’t smile, because she’s dead.
I don’t have time to think about that. I have to get out of here.
I struggle to my feet and trudge on unsteady legs toward the body remains. I dig through pockets and shove whatever may or may not be useful into my duffel.