Miss Brandymoon's Device: a novel of sex, nanotech, and a sentient lava lamp (Divided Man Book 1)

by Skelley, Rune

  Shuddering, Rook crumbled to her knees. Bramble’s fires flooded her body, kneeling before Kyle. Brook raised Rook’s arms toward the victorious side of the Divided Man. She moaned, and tears poured down her cheeks. Rook couldn’t tell her own grief from Bramble’s ecstasy or Brook’s desperation.

  “But no, that would never do.” Kyle took a calm step toward Rook.

  The princesses shrank from Kyle’s gaze, astonished to find themselves under direct scrutiny. He always looked through them before, and they hadn’t known the difference until now.

  “All that time, when I thought I was missing something, that was it. I only had these useless shadows, not you at all. And that means even now I’m not truly Complete.”

  Bramble quivered with helpless lust. Brook overflowed with degradation. Both reached for Kyle, but he passed over them and his will fell upon Rook like a storm cloud.

  “Love me. Complete me. Give me your true self. Do it, or I’ll kill Fin.”

  He didn’t know she could feel Fin already dying, didn’t know her wall was there. Rook clung to her connection to Fin, pulling him back toward the surface, feeding him her waning strength. Distantly, she felt him kicking, told him not to give up.

  Brook seized the opportunity to be wanted again, by showing Kyle what Rook hid. She gripped Fin’s tenuous lifeline and screamed. Bramble saw that for once someone else would get in trouble, and clawed at the wall Rook fought to sustain.

  Kyle toppled the wall effortlessly and a tight grin appeared on his face. Rook watched fires consume the remainder of the audience as Kyle charged himself up and reached for the tether to Fin. Rook’s darkest fear would be realized, the annihilating collision inside her head. Kyle cackled in anticipation.

  Rook raced to head him off, too late, a shrill cry of warning all she could manage.

  The vortex of malice howled through Rook’s mind, filling it to the edges, using her as a conduit to bypass Fin’s defenses.

  The roar of the attack was followed by roaring silence. Rook saw Fin standing on the stage, but felt nothing.

  A clear tone of reassurance rang in her mind, thanking her for the warning. Fin had let go and melted to the side, using Kyle’s blast to recharge the exhausted spiders.

  Kyle raged, off-balance and mentally hyperextended.

  Rook was already sprinting. Kyle would know, would have time to react, if she let herself think. She dove into his bad knee from the front, plowing right through it with her shoulder. It bent ninety degrees the wrong way, making a noise like a bowling ball dropped onto bubble wrap.

  Kyle fell, his face frozen in a silent shriek of agony. His broken leg folded under him unnaturally as he toppled to the scorched and littered floor, arching his back and clutching at his knee.

  Fin swept back upon him. Kyle was defenseless, drowning in pain and shame. Fin sheared through the landscape in Kyle’s skull and zeroed in on the ziggurat. His blow shattered it, reducing all its blocks and stolen bones to swirling gray ash and a deafening, discordant cymbal crash.

  Kyle slumped, suddenly limp. His eyes remained open, unblinking.

  Fin took one step toward the ruined body and sighed. He shook his head. One side of his face toyed with a grin, the other tightened more grimly.

  Rook stood and brushed herself off. Her head echoed with the crash of Kyle’s defeat. The merest hint of a smile curled her lips. She was complete.

  Fin and Rook looked at each other, and out at the rows and rows of empty pews. Kyle used up the audience entirely in his final assault.

  Fin said, “Those poor fools trusted him.”

  Rook shuddered as she took in the aftermath of the carnage. “No more mental powers. Ever.”

  Fin smoothed Rook’s hair back from her face and kissed her. They walked hand-in-hand down the aisle and out through the ruined front doors of the cathedral into a flurry of falling cinders and early November snow.