Poison Kissed (22 page)

23

Her eyes close, blocking out the sight of him, and Joey swivels away. He coils his long serpent body tight, muscles bulging, and flicks free from the tangle of fabric he was wearing and onto the concrete floor. It’s rough and delicious under his belly, broken edges sliding like a gritty caress.

Ivy shrieks, vibrating his body with sensation. “Stay back, serpent, or watch her die.” She flings another cosmic punch, but he’s too swift and darts away. The force slams into the wall behind him, thrashing itself to nothing.

His forked tongue flickers, tasting, hunting his adversary on spelldrunk air. His constricted reptile brain thinks in compartments, detached, analytical. One thing at a time. Mina struggles only weakly now. Ivy’s killing her, knifing deeper and deeper into her soul, searching for something that isn’t there.

Cold reptile hatred needles into his blood, and ragevenom seeps from his clawed fins. He hisses, and it feels good. Ivy should die, for himself and Mina both. Swipe his tongue along her cooling skin, taste her dying sweat, feel the breath rattle in her throat as she expires.

But his hungry tongue can sense a vile memoryspell connection between them. It stretches the air, taut like a glassy spiderweb, thrumming with every vibration. If he breaks it, Mina’s mind might shatter forever.

On the wall, a distorted black shadow-Ivy drags another hunk of bleeding flesh from shadow-Mina’s skull, stuffs it into her mouth and chews, smacking her shadow-lips with glee.

Fury and fear ripple Joey’s spine. Venom swells his fangs tight, and he rears up to strike.

Shadow-Ivy cackles, and the real Ivy grins, yanking Mina’s limp hair. “Kill me, and you kill her. I win.”

Joey doesn’t think. He just thrashes his wickedspiked tail and swipes the shimmering green globe off the desk.

Ivy and her shadow howl as one, and dive for it.

But too late. The sphere hits concrete and shatters into sparkling dust, and the light shrieks like a skinned rat and snuffs out.

Darkness, lit only by a single sputtering candle. Shadows smother, huge and threatening.

Joey coils under the table, muscles rippling, and hisses delicious pleasure. Serpent likes the dark. Reptile eyes drag in the tiniest particles of light. Tongue licks the air clean. Sweet vibrations tingle his belly, his spine, his nerves afire, and he sees everything.

Mina jerks, her back arching impossibly high. Sweat and blood run rivulets on her gothicwhite skin, trickling scarlet on her chin, her shoulders, her spreadeagled arms. Candlelight gleams on her torn black leather, her rich azure hair quivering vertical. A stark, beautiful death scene. Fit for an angel. But he won’t let her go.

Deadly swift, Joey strikes for Ivy’s throat.

Ivy screeches, flapping her arms to ward him off. His fangs slash fresh scars that hiss green across her eyes as the venom sinks rapidly in. She howls in agony, her skin bubbling.

The air groans and shudders, and something invisible shatters like thunder.

The spell’s broken.

Mina slumps to the floor, groaning. Rolls onto her side, wriggles weakly, trying to sit up. She’s alive.

Hot relief washes Joey’s blood, and with a thrash and a crackle of protesting flesh, he shifts back.

Disorienting, as usual. Blackness thickens like treacle, the air cool and useless and bereft of sensation. His bones snap into place, and he gasps on the floor, his lungs expanded too fast. He crawls blindly toward her on shaking limbs, his human eyes only slowly adjusting.

In the corner, Ivy yells and thrashes, hands plastered over her eyes. He can’t care. Just let Mina be conscious, and not a charred shell, her brain gutted, wailing in animal pain and confusion.

He’ll kill her if he must. He won’t let her live like that. The least he can do, after all she’s endured for him.

And then, maybe he’ll just let Ivy kill him, too.

He grips Mina’s cold hand and searches for his voice, his larynx still dry and growing. “Mina, talk to me. Wake up.”

Mina groans again and blinks bloodshot ruby eyes. Her syllables slur together like she’s drunk. “Joey . . . Whatthefuck . . .”

Invisible sunshine lightens his heart.
Thank you.

I blinked through a melting haze of bloody scars. Agony still raped my skull, my vision tumbling black. My throat pinched raw like I’d screamed too much. My stomach convulsed, trying to purge that ghastly memorysauce, but nothing came up. I tried to talk, but only incoherent syllables came out.

With a final shimmer, my vision cleared. Candlelight. Sparkling vials. Blood on the dusty floor. Ivy’s screams pierced my head like needles, and it all came back. Serpent. Me screaming. Ivy eating my brain with a fork. She’d stolen my voice, chewed it up like mincemeat. My exhausted nerves sparked in fury. I wanted to twist her neck until it snapped.

Joey gripped my forearm. “Come on, princess. Let’s go.”

Right as usual. We were in no shape to fight. Ivy would have to keep. I struggled to stand, pain stabbing my limbs and cramping my guts tight. Not a scrap of scale or fin left on him, just flawless human skin, iridescent with his strange sweat. It didn’t escape me that he was naked, either, and my body chemistry screeched with hormones and endorphins and all the prehistoric megapanic overkill your brain spurts out when it thinks you’re dying.

Flame raged in my veins, and my reason melted away, ragged like burning film. I wanted to curl my neck and howl like a werewolf at the moon, swivel my face to the wind and sprint until my leg muscles melted in a lactic acid tide.

Most of all, I wanted to peel off my wet leather pants and pin him to the floor and fuck, over and over and again and again, until we made babies or died trying.

Ivy howled, her wings scything, and I dragged my fatigued mind from the gutter. No time for weirdness now.

Did he just call me ‘princess’?

I stumbled and scraped my wet hair back, averting my gaze. “I’m okay,” I mumbled. “Let’s get outta here.”

Ivy flapped aloft and dived for us with a hideous screech, blood streaming from her eyes.

Joey scooped up his coat. I fumbled for my knife, and as I turned to run, seductive glitter from the gadget-cluttered desk caught my gaze. Spells, all wrapped up in glassy suits. On impulse, I scooped up a handful of Ivy’s tricks and stuffed them inside the broken zipper of my top. And we ran.

Leaving any chance of retrieving my magic behind us for now.

On the platform, creatures barely stirred, safe in their drugnumbed dreamings and unawakened by the din we’d made.

But not all. As I sprinted past, a slimy tentacle flopped around my ankle like a wet tongue. Yuck.

I kicked the evil thing off, but my skin crawled, and a few meters short of the platform’s edge, I leapt.

Right into a snoring pile of baby spriggans.

Flesh crushed under my heel, and an almighty screech split my head.

And everyone in the cavern woke up.

24

I staggered onto the tracks, my head clanging like I’d slept in a belltower. Yells rent the air as creatures stumbled, wriggled to their feet, launched crazily into the air to fill the place like a drunken locust swarm, tangling limbs, glowing eyes, thrashing fairy wings.

Oops.

A metal wing sliced at my eyes. I ducked, the sharp edge barely missing my face. Claws poked my ears, raked at my arms, pulled my hair. Bodies crushed me, wrapping around my limbs, dragging me down. Sugarstink sloughed vilely in my nostrils, and I fought a painful retch, my guts already abused.

My knees scraped the gravel, and I whiplashed and kicked to get free. A baby spriggan squawked and chewed at my toe with his sharp little gapped teeth, and I wriggled him off. I struggled to turn my head, to spy our exit, but the way was blocked with gibbering, capering fairies. We’d have to find another way out.

I glimpsed Joey, a dark shadow in rainbow chaos, and I flexed my thighs and cartwheeled, kicking a slavering needle-toothed monster in the face on my way to grab his outstretched hand.

“This way,” I gasped, but he already dragged me toward the abandoned tunnel.

Needle jaws munched my calf. Pain lanced. Blood spattered on the long grinning snout of some faeborn crocodile-thing. Her hair hung in wispy clumps from a half-bald head striped in rough scales. Her face hung lopsided, distorted, a black gaping hole where her ears should be, her jaw distended huge and skinny.

Teeth grated on my shinbone. I yelled and struggled, shock crawling my nerves tight. She let go and munched again, a bigger bite. Joey cursed and slashed at her skinny chest, but she held on grimly, blindly. Wings brushed my face, leaving hasty smears of panic in their wake. I fumbled in my vest. My fingers closed around a smooth glass marble, and I flung it at the creature, hoping it was something that’d hurt.

Glass cracked, and caustic smoke erupted in a rich blue cloud.

My lungs burned, and I choked on gristly envy. Some hapless creature’s jealousy, sucked from their brain with Ivy-spell and stuffed into glass. The crocodile-thing shrieked, greenish scales bubbling as the foul acid ate in. She tore away, bloody leather shreds hanging from shark-hooked teeth.

I staggered into Joey’s shoulder, my calf afire. He gripped my hip, pulled me upright against him, and we ran for the inkblack tunnel. Behind us, the mad fairy zoo cavorted and squealed, the cacophony reaching new heights. I heard teeth clashing, and flesh ripping. I didn’t look back.

Joey wore nothing but his long coat, but he didn’t limp on the sharp gravel. He tugged me into the dark tunnel, and gradually my harsh breathing and the ragged pump of my heart soothed my ears over the chaos.

Darkness hemmed us in, and I had only our footsteps crunching on the gravel and Joey’s featherlight touch on my fingertips to rely on. I fumbled in my pocket, but my phone was lost. Behind us, the fairy circus scaled a threatening crescendo.

The blackness thickened, and tension curled my nerves like wire. And then metal snapped on flint, and a faint orange glow lit train tracks half-buried in rubble, ragged heaps of twisted metal and debris, rough-drilled walls. Flame stretched and flickered in his elegant hand. Cigarette lighter, rescued from his coat pocket.

He dragged me to a halt, his breath short, and gestured with the flame. “Look.”

But I’d already seen it, and together we staggered over. Funny how our eyes go the same places, he and I.

In a rough crevice, a rusted ladder stretched upward. I squinted. At the top loomed a dark round shape, maybe a grating or sewer cover.

He wiped sweaty hair from his eyes, leaving a faint neon streak. “Think you can climb that?”

“Guess we’ll see.” My bleeding calf ached, but already I stretched on my toes, grasping for the lowest rung.

The metal cut my hands, old and corroded. I swung myself up, biceps throbbing, hauling up rung by rung until I found my feet, and then I scrambled up that ladder as fast as my shaking legs would move. The walls cocooned me tight like a horrid silkworm, and I longed for the sky, stars, dry breeze on my face. Beyond that, I didn’t want to think.

My arms threatened to buckle as I climbed, and one or two rungs snapped in my grip, just rust and dirt. Joey slipped up behind me—Jesus, that man can move silently when he wants to.

I reached a heavy grate clogged with dirt. I shoved at it with the heel of my hand. No movement. I hit it harder. It screeched aside an inch, and pale golden light knifed in.

I smelled fresh air, blessedly sweet like an ice cream headache on my palate, and relief spiked hard in my chemical-rich blood.

The street. Part of the station. The doorway to hell. I didn’t care. I braced my back against the wall and shoved again, and inch by inch the grate squealed away.

I climbed out, my knee crunching on gritty sidewalk. Weak streetlight flickered over a narrow alley, tall tenements so close together, I could reach a hand out to either side and touch them. Early morning, still dark. Traffic’s distant hum greeted me like a friend. I embraced a deep lungful of stinking night air, and the glittering city never tasted so good. I wobbled around and held out my hand for Joey.

Purple light blossomed in my eyes, dazzling, and a horrid glassy chuckle tinkled in my ears.

My pulse jerked up and sideways, but too late. Nowhere I could go.

My back thudded against the wall. I squinted through shielding fingers, and the purple flash faded to a fragrant strawberry glow.

Diamond sniffed and tossed his hair back over glowing pink wings in a prismed fiberoptic flash. “Ashamified of you, bluebell. So predictamable.”

Joey erupted from the rusted rungs like an angry djinn. Swift and silent, he landed between us on soft bare feet with uncannily elegant balance, searching behind him with one hand to make sure I was safe.

Strange warmth spilled into my heart. Shielding me with his body. Him, protecting me. He hadn’t always done that. Something had changed.

Joey shifted his left hand with a threatening squelch and flexed venom-dripping black webs before Diamond’s eyes. “I’m already having a shitty day, glassfae. One chance. Back off. Now.”

But sick memory kicked me in the kidneys, almost knocking me to the ground. I’d almost forgotten. Joey didn’t know what I’d done. Didn’t know what I’d said, what I’d given away.

“Joey, for fucksake.” Wildly, I grabbed, trying to get him behind me, away.

He shook me off. I yowled, but I was helpless, my voice a parched, empty shadow.

Diamond wrinkled his pointy nose at me in a smile and flung out his hand.

Joey didn’t flinch. He just struck, a shiny black blur.

Venom splashed. Diamond darted away on swift glass wings. Joey swerved in midair and flipped around, still human, but his fangs dripped green poison and his eyes glowed icy with reptilian fury.

Soft white crystals splattered his skin, and as I watched, frozen in icewalled dread, Diamond threw more.

Salt.

A fat white handful, sticking like a paintsplash to Joey’s neonbright skin where his coat slipped away from his chest.

Joey’s head snapped up, and he glared at Diamond with feral serpent hatred scorching in his eyes.

Diamond just leapt back and upward on a flash of wings. He twitched out a gleaming pearly pistol, hurtling backwards in midair like some fucking Tarantino film, and fired.

The shot jangled my ears, and blood flowered scarlet on Joey’s chest. Right in the salty splatter, beneath where his collarbone met his shoulder.

Joey blinked.

Swallowed.

Choked.

Diamond swooped, cackling like glass on broken brick. “Shiftify that, serpentbrain.”