by C. V. Larkin
I'm yours.
Sweet Mother she'd said that. Worse, she'd meant it.
He was the one thing she wanted above all else. Tian stood frozen in front of the one male she'd trade her next three breaths to have inside her, trade what was left of her mangled soul to have a future with and the realization was paralyzing. It was impossible to cope with the onslaught of emotion spilling through the electric fire of skin to skin contact, reciprocated. Something fractured in her skull, locking her down tight.
She'd crossed the line with him.
"I need to find the marker," she said. Her voice was gritty, empty, pathetic.
"Tian."
She shook her head fighting the lure of his voice. What a tragedy they were.
"Let go."
Sio searched her features for something she didn't know how to give him. Eventually he leaned back, folding his arms across the flat planes of his chest.
"I'm going with you," he said. His face took on a stubborn cast and the expression shouldn't have made her want to kiss him quite so badly.
"That's not necessary."
"I wasn't asking."
Damn it, he was pissed. Not that he didn't have every right to be.
"I need to change and you still owe Avery a bodily fluid so he can shift. I'll meet you in the kitchen," she said finally. Tian dragged herself away, opening her door on the silent plea that the conversation be over.
"It wasn't just a fantasy was it? Wasn't just my fantasy."
It wasn't a question either. Tian froze, swallowing around the arid state of her mouth. She could have lied to him, shit knows it would have been easier, but she didn't.
"No," she said, fighting the urge to bounce her forehead off the door a few times. "It wasn't just a fantasy." She pushed forward into her room, closing him out into the hallway. She slumped against the hard planes of the wood behind her. Physical compartmentalization was cake, but she was losing the battle to the personal mess.
Chapter 24
Over the River and Into the Woods
The weather was abysmal as Sio followed Tian onto the front stoop. The rain fell in steady torrents, as if the darkened sky had opened up, intending to make good on earlier threats of biblical scale flooding. Expectoration from on high pelted the ground with the frothing, bouncing, bone chilling almost sleet that San Francisco had distilled into a hateful art form. It was still early, though how early was difficult to pinpoint given the miserable state of the climate. The streets were empty, as if they'd been abandoned during the night, as if the end of the world had hit before the flood and he'd missed it. The only indication of life was the electric whine of the Muni Bus off in the distance as it accelerated up an endless supply of hills and squealed reluctantly to its designated stops.
He stood with Tian in the alcove between the front door and the unsightly metal security gate while she watched the street. A muscle tensed in the side of her jaw. Her agitation, obvious or not, was instigating a fresh wave of his adrenaline. There was nothing safe about his life at the moment, sure as hell nothing sane. And the most unbelievable part about this whole mess was how easily he alternated between fighting to stay alive and thanking his lucky stars. He wondered briefly what day it was and if he still had a job. Then he silenced the semi hysterical lunatic cackle building inside his skull and headed into the street.
The security gate clattered shut and the air became oppressive, coating them in a thick film of frigid moisture that made it hard to breathe. Sio coughed into the newly soddened NorthFace jacket Avery had lent him and tried not to make a big deal over the fact that his skin was crawling. He grimaced and squinted against the downpour that dripped into his eyes.
"They're looking for you," Tian said.
Rivulets of water soaked her hair as it hung in sodden waves against her neck and shoulders. Thick trails of the stuff traced shifting lines into the warm gold of her flesh. He had a vivid flashback of doing something similar with his mouth, but it was squelched too soon by the uncomfortable weight of whatever was out there searching. He followed her diagonally across the street.
Tian's right hand was in her pocket. The other held a soaked paper lunch sack that Avery had handed her before they left. Her shoulders were hunched around her ears as she dodged the polluted streams that raged through the gutters and the cracks in the pavement. She looked like an image out of a graphic novel, the only spot of color in an otherwise gray wasteland of urban clutter.
"So," Sio said before clearing his throat. It was difficult to force enough air out to talk and was getting progressively worse. "Where is it that we're going?"
Tian glanced at him without breaking stride, dodging the random objects that popped up to thwart the natural agility of her movement. She glistened, fiery and inhumanly beautiful in the buttery electric street lights that were seconds away from going into permanent hibernation for the day.
"Union Square." She threw the statement out there as if she was suggesting they take time off from the survival racket and do a little sightseeing. He got the impression she was downplaying the destination and would have resented the attempt if it had been directed at him. Tian's gaze lingered long enough to kindle a steady blaze under his skin, building until all of his sodden garments and the miserable frigid temperatures the Haight had to offer were welcome. Sio looked down at his hands and noted grimly that he was spilling steam like a Tibetan Monk in the middle of winter.
"Any particular reason we're wandering around the Haight at the butt crack of dawn instead of driving?" He sounded grumpy, but he'd take it. Grumpy was better than smitten, not that he wasn't planted firmly in both camps.
"Wandering would imply that we lack a specific destination," Tian responded, digging around in her pocket and lifting out an old fashioned silver key before rolling it across the knuckles of her right hand.
They shuffled past a darkened head shop and a couple of garish vintage clothing stores, taking advantage of the minimal shelter the short overhangs out in front provided. They avoided the doorways where decaying figures loitered in worn sleeping bags. Only one of them was human.
Sio wasn't sure how he knew, but he didn't question it. He'd seen enough in the last couple of days to know that the sense of wrongness emanating from several of the bodies wasn't a product of an overactive imagination. Tian gave those doorways a wide berth too, which made him feel less like he was making shit up. One of the non-human creatures leered at him from its sagging skin suit. It produced a small razor blade from under the rancid mass of its tongue and cut a boil from the loose gray flesh of its ankle. Then it stuffed the scab into its mouth.
Sio choked back a curse and increased his pace until he was walking directly to Tian's left. The overhang ended about halfway across his body and the acid rain runoff was pouring down his left side, trickling down the back of his collar and fusing the already saturated shirt closer to his spine.
"Okay," he said, fighting the futile urge to start wringing out his clothes. "Give me a reason why I'm wandering around the Haight at the butt crack of dawn, getting dumped on by this freak ass storm instead of hopping the 71 and taking it to Powell."
Tian stopped in front of a neon graveyard. The burnt out tubing was set behind a thick film of marker tagged Plexiglas in a display that was the ultimate personification of pop culture disillusionment. The bizarre collection surrounded a wooden door covered in tags and carvings. The entrance had been painted so many times the peeling had begun to mimic organic structure. Tian inserted the silver key into the lock which chattered in protest as she turned it.
"Driving would take too long," she said. Her tone was perfectly logical, as if she weren't walking into a video store as a viable option to their transportation problem. She leaned in to the door and it snapped open with a loud crack that made it hard to tell how much wood was left under the thickly painted layers of its hard candy shell. "We need to avoid being out in the open for as much time as possible while Avery shifts."
As Sio crossed the threshold the relief from the crushing pressure outside was instantaneous. He stood taking in the rows of lacquered plywood shelving, and the staggering amount of shiny plastic DVD cases. The ceiling was covered in dully glowing neon letters, wires, small bulbs, and enough circuit boards to make him feel like they were standing inside a busted computer modem staring at the pieces while all its guts hung out on display.
No offense, but...
"And the Vegas of video stores here counts?"
She shut them in together as they dripped lagoons onto the floor. "Like you wouldn't believe."
With the door shut the space was downright claustrophobic. And it hadn't been the Taj Mahal to begin with. It was so narrow that if he'd been inclined to do so he could have reached out and planted both palms on the shelves of the opposing walls. At the far end of the room the cashier's counter was set back into a small recess. It was embellished with three salvaged doors affixed to the front. Each one was cut to fit and painted in a different bright primary color. The top of the counter looked like recycled plank and the nearest side facing him was covered in an eclectic collection of kitchen cabinets. The pen knife carvings dug into the wood on the counter were similar to the stuff he'd seen on the door coming in.
Tian walked over to the bright red door at the far edge of the counter and kicked it a couple of times. The impact caused the citrine yellow glass knob in the front to rattle.
"Rise and shine, Dryad. It's time to get off your sap filled ass and open up a portal." Tian paused, listened for a second and shook her head. "Fucking non-diurnal bastards. Get. Up. Todd."
She ran a hand through her hair, pushing it off her forehead, cracking her neck in an unspoken expression of irritation. Sio swallowed, dully noting that the unconscious effect she had on him had gotten stronger. Tian took a couple of steps back toward the far wall and dropped the soggy lunch sack on the floor with a loud crack.
"Avery sent you a goody bag, Todd. Now get out here and quit wasting time." The inflection in her voice had gone back to being conversational, reasonable even, but Tian's application of tact was overtly threatening.
Whatever she had said worked. Small clumps of dark potting soil sifted out from under the counter. An awkward arrhythmic thudding emanated from somewhere in the ground. Tian stepped back again and leaned against a wall of shelves, crossing her arms over her chest.
The red door popped open and vomited up a load of dirt, and a viscous mess of roots or vines that looked like entrails. The store was overrun with the deep wet incense of moist earth, and it was like standing in the middle of the most well-tended greenhouse in history. Sio let the aroma curl around him like a long lost memory from the childhood he'd never had.
The pile on the floor heaved and eventually one of the thicker vines crooked into an alarmingly sharp angle topped by a knobby projection. Another root looking leg followed suit. Funny, in all the horror movies the zombies dug themselves out hands first. The brown mulch encrusted paws came next though, followed by a narrow sharply angled face with about ten pounds of metal in it.
The guy in the compost pile made his way coughing, snorting, and gagging to a sitting position. He was covered in a thin membrane of translucent slime that stretched in unsightly ways. The dryad flicked the goop onto the floor in front of them with cranky, angry movements.
"Morning sunshine," Tian said. She used the toe of her boot to nudge the brown paper bag she'd dropped further away from the mess on the floor. "We need to get to Union Square, so I need you to get up."
The guy on the floor, whose name Sio could only assume was Todd, snarled, yawned, and ran a hand through the strawberry blonde assortment of tiny leaves that stood in mucous covered spikes across the top of his head. His pinched face had a greenish cast to it and he hadn't bothered to look up at them as he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes with both balled fists.
"Yeah, and I need to be unconscious, so it looks like we have a conflict of interest," Todd said around another massive tongue flashing yawn. There were at least six studs in the thing. Two of them were gauged. It was a wonder Todd could spit out a coherent sentence at all.
The vines in what was left of the pile began to unfurl, sliding ominously across the warped floor boards. One of the slithering tendrils spun to intimate heights up Tian's leg. She flinched and kicked it off, grabbing the damn thing and wrapping it around Todd's neck. She stood up and yanked it hard, planting the sole of her boot right in the middle of the dryad's boney chest until his eyes bugged behind the closed lids.
"You still feeling conflicted?" she asked.
Todd's eyes opened wide. They were the rich meaty brown of fresh earth, unencumbered by the usual appearance of pupils or whites. The remaining tangle of vines, which had been writhing angrily, froze as recognition began to dawn in the dryad's bulging mulch flavored pools.
Todd blinked once and swallowed around the vine constricting his airway. He looked up at Tian in barely disguised awe. "Hi, Tian, Union Square you say." His voice was reedy due to lack of oxygen.
"I did," Tian responded, easing off the throttle and dropping the vine on the floor.
"It would have been faster to take the bus," Sio said.
Todd's head shot around, snapping to attention as if he'd been popped in the face. The dryad licked his lips, eyes darting from Sio and back to Tian. The guy looked back towards Sio and his gaze stuck.
"Please, please tell me that by using the term Avery's goody bag you were referring to him." The kid looked like a rabbit that had accidentally stumbled into a lion's den.... If the rabbit was contemplating setting out silverware.
Tian snorted and swiped the paper bag off the floor. "Nope." She opened it up, pulled out a DVD case, and held it up between her index and middle fingers. "But you'll always have 'Day of the Triffids' as a consolation prize."
Todd looked dejected.
"It's not quite the same is it?" Sio asked. He wasn't sure what stupid self-destructive impulse had pushed him to throw his two cents in.
All the latent heat they'd been suppressing since the incident in the hallway snapped back with a vengeance. Tian's pupils dilated, her nostrils flared with the effort she was making to regulate her breathing. Sio swallowed, noting how he wasn't left unaffected. His circulatory system was pulling a drain and divert, packing platelets into his cock as if it were a 5 p.m. Muni through Chinatown.
"No kidding," came Todd's reply from the floor.
Sio bit down into his tongue until he tasted blood. She was killing him. They were going have to get this under control.
"Sorry."
Tian laughed even though he knew she didn't think the situation was funny. There was a hysterical edge to the sound.
"We don't have time for this."
Whatever it was that had her on lockdown was holding tight, even as it started to crack. Sio could feel it, could feel pieces of himself seeping away into her. Even wanting it as badly as he did, it was still deeply unsettling.
Todd broke into their private moment with an obnoxious reminder of his existence. "I do. I totally have time for this."
The guy was all Ichabod Crane as he extracted himself from the swamp on the floor in an awkward flurry of elbows and a series of even more uncoordinated knee thrusts. The vines jerked back and forth in a desperate attempt to get out of Todd's path of destruction. Standing, the dryad turned and leaned against the counter, offering up an encouraging little nod as if he were giving them the go ahead to resume the show. Tian shot the DVD box she'd been holding at his head. Todd smirked, folding his arms in front of himself before losing and then recovering his footing with a loud squelching sound. One of the vines shot out in a graceful arc, snapping the DVD out of the air and curling protectively around the case.
"Nice panties," Tian said.
"You don't throw the good stuff," Todd scolded her. "They're bikini briefs and I was sleeping."
The bikini briefs in question could hardly
be classified as underwear. What Todd was sporting was a pair of black skull and cross bone grape smugglers that had long since passed twelve year old girl and were working their way towards fig leaf microscopic.
"To each his own, man," Sio said. "They do sorta complement the dead cartoon thing you've got going with the nipple piercings."
Todd fingered the bisecting bars in his left nipple absently. "Yeah, I always figured the whole black X through each of the nips made a statement, ya know?"
"The Iron Maiden is my dream girl?" Tian asked. She tried, but couldn't manage to suppress her amusement.
Todd flicked the mat finish ball on one of the barbells and grinned. "Exactly," he said, "but for you two I'm open to suggestions."
Tian rolled her eyes and Sio fought the urge to go over and make out on her. Sio knew she was itching to get out of there and he was feeling the sudden spark of inspiration as to how to make it happen.
"I'm glad you said that," he focused his attention on the pincushion dryad over near the counter. The statement came out perfect, predatory.
Todd's jaw slipped, his eyes grew wide, and his Adam's apple bobbed wildly in his throat. "You are?"
"I am. Do you want a suggestion from me, Todd?" Sio asked.
"Yes."
"Yes what?" Tian said in the kind of whisky soaked tone that caused Sio's dick to jerk. Damn, she caught on quick. Todd's eyes flicked over to her as if he couldn't believe his luck.
"Yes, Sir," the dryad choked. The mostly naked non-human looked like he was about to faint.
The roots around Todd vibrated with anticipation as they curled over the dryad's limbs, holding him up near the side of the counter like a vertical sacrifice. Sio reached out and grabbed one as it stretched out from the counter top. He slid his hand over the surprisingly rough surface toward the tip and watched Todd's eyes glaze over. The dryad's knees buckled as Sio jerked the vine.