Sugar Skulls (2 page)

I lean forward a hair’s breadth, close enough to almost kiss the microphone, focus my eyes on some random guy at the bar, and pull the first note from the dark space in the back of my throat.

M

She looks straight at me. Gazes at me. Gazes
through
me.

The first note slips past her lips. It rolls over the crowd, and they’re instantly hers, already amped and soaring higher. There’s nothing quite like popping your Cyrene cherry, and a hundred newbies are experiencing it all around me as their nanotech processes the music, the drugs, the booze.

I miss that.

So it damn near knocks me on my ass when her words smash into me, and inside I unfold, like flesh-and-blood origami. Hands numb, mouth dry, blood on fire. I just stand there, rigid, muscles refusing to respond.
Can’t move. Gotta move. Too exposed here.
But her voice runs through my veins like napalm.

For a moment, a long moment, an eternity of a moment, I’m lost.
This . . . this is impossible.
Flutters and tingles and frissons long absent, jolting me as dormant synaptic pathways are jarred back into service. If strings ran up my spine, she just plucked the high E, a fierce vibration that shakes me to my core.

She looks away, and quakes subside into mere tremors. I close my eyes, welcoming new sine waves of sensation for three sharp breaths, then open them again, back in control. Propping myself up against the bar, I abandon my drink to process the last few seconds.

All these months, there’s been nothing. But just now? I felt it. I
feel
it. I pulse with life, lightning dancing across my skin as she batters the crowd with furious verses.

But I’m stuck on that first gasp.

One note. One word. She laid me low and resurrected me in one fell swoop.

Who is this girl?

V

Wrapping the microphone cord around my hand, I really lay into the lyrics, jacking straight into the brains of the audience. The boys and girls slosh around the pit like iridescent-foamed water in a dirty fish tank.

Except for the guy. The guy at the bar with the piercing gaze and the messy hair and the look of a lost soul. I’m too far away to see the color of his eyes, and he isn’t wearing anything worth noticing. Not the sharp edges of clothes fresh off the rack. Not the silver glint of a dozen facial piercings. None of the writhing subdermal implants or interchangeable magnetic tattoos that are the latest trends to hit hard and fast. At least, not any I can see from my vantage point. Black shirt and jeans that help him fade into the background. Dark blond, lacking all the bleach and color of anyone who spends any time in the sun or a salon. Even leaning back, every line of his body indicates a readiness to bolt.

I force my attention back to the pit, determined not to spare him another thought.

Just another gig, Vee. Just another audience. Get through the song, already.

M

Need to move. Need to run. Should run. Should get out of here.

It takes supreme effort to tear my attention away from her long enough to acknowledge her partners in crime. Treble summons entire orchestras and metal bands from her laptop and synth with a few frenzied keystrokes. Trouble snarls with hungry delight as she channels torrents of sound with a pair of haptic gloves, manipulating the very notes midstream like an angry sorceress as holographic turntables whirl in the foreground.

But front and center, there’s Her. She’s a creature of myth, with Her siren song and Her banshee wail. The set’s barely begun, but the hive’s heart and my heart both beat to Her drum.

Our eyes finally meet again, and I’m thrown back into a surging sea. When that first note hit, I was a drowning man finally breaking the surface. This time, the current simply takes me.

Outside, I betray nothing. Cucumber-cool and casual, even as Her eyes narrow and Her gaze bores into me. My crippled nervous system allows little else to show. But inside, I’m a being of crystal, oscillating in perfect harmony.

Running is the last thing on my mind now.

V

I should call a bouncer and have him ejected. Injected. Hauled off for a diagnostic and a thorough probing. There’s something not right. Not right with him. Not right with the way he looks at me or the way the song pours into him like water into the desert.

I force myself to look away, to push through the next song. If it’s not working for him, he’ll leave, right? He’ll go register a complaint with the main office, and they’ll roll up to the Loft and ask a lot of questions that boil down to the same freaking one I have:

Why isn’t he responding to the music?

Approaching the end of the set, the lyrics get rough around the edges, liable to rip if I lean into them any more than I already am. Everyone below me is frantic, writhing. Thrum output’s still on the rise as the lasers scan the crowd, gather up the ambient energy, and funnel it away. Neat, clean, efficient—and why we’re all here.

Except for the guy leaning against the bar. Separate from the others. Motionless. Gaze latched on me like he’s dying and I have the cure in my pocket.

That’s when I realize he’s responding, all right. Just not the way I expected.

Fuck the grid. I’m the one with the power right now.

M

The mood is shifting. The air is thick with it, the crowd buzzing and overstimulated, neurons firing and misfiring as the hive responds to Her rage, and She unleashes it. I swear, the ground trembles with thumping bass lines. She just might bring Hellcat Maggie’s down around us.

Now Her eyes won’t leave mine. She’s no longer the eye of the storm; She’s the storm itself, pounding the crowd and sweeping them along with Her.

V

I’m pushing it. I can feel the stress building in the new thrum-collectors like a force field against my bare arms, my throat, my lips. It’s too much for this crowd, too, their fresh nanotech already blitzed out and buzzing. I should dial it back. Get backstage. Take a handful of pills. Chill the fuck out.

It’s been a year since the last blowout, the last blackout. Three hundred and sixty-five days of uninterrupted consciousness, flushed down the toilet for the sake of some asshole staring at me from the bar.

I twist the microphone out of the stand and launch into something new. To hell with the set list. To hell with Corporate-approved garbage. I find words that have been bouncing around in my head for so long that I can spit them out now, perfect and round. “It’s all just screams and whispers, just prettied-up and dyed. Your fuck-façade all faded, a tarnished future bride . . .”

Somewhere behind me, Jax loses her shit.

“What the hell are you doing?” she shouts over the thumping rhythm that’s our artificial heartbeat. “Break time! Sasha’s gonna wet ’em, and I need a hit of silvertip!”

Despite the protest, she turns up every dial and pushes up every slide, fingers moving over the touchscreens with brutal efficiency. Sasha’s already pulling in chants from sixteenth-century monasteries and screams recorded in hospital waiting rooms. I can feel the fluid in my inner ears pulsing.

I’m going to get a reaction out of our silent onlooker, even if I fall headfirst into a blackout.

So I let him have it, all the words and the anger and betrayal and despair I hold in my hummingbird heart. The rest of the crowd moans and sways, crashing into each other, molecules colliding. Hellcat Maggie shouts something at Sasha, then tries the headset, but all I get from my earpiece is crackling feedback that drives me hard into the next verse.

I lock eyes with the stranger, vomiting up all my dark, dirty guts for him to see. Below me, the flotsam holds itself upright. If these people were pleasantly giddy before, now they’re stumbling drunk. A few fall and are dragged to the side by security. A couple kisses so hard that blood trickles from the corners of their mouths. A threesome in the back crashes into an alcove, tearing the velvet curtains from their brass rod.

I can’t stop myself now. I close out the set with a crescendo that drives everyone and everything off a cliff and into glorious sonic freefall.

CHAPTER TWO

M

Her spell ends, still echoing in every fiber of my being, and its absence hits the crowd like a shock wave. Spotlights burst, punctuated by pop-pop-pops as hot glass shards cut through lighting gels and shower the band. A heavy crash follows as one of the thrum-collectors blows out and its emitter plate shatters against the floor.

People in the pit are frothing at the mouth, manic and terrified and roaring like beasts. It’s like two hundred simultaneous nervous breakdowns or the worst trip in pharmaceutical history. This would be brutal enough for recruits with a few months under their belt; for the newbies, it must be damn near agony. I retreat in self-preservation and start working my way toward the double doors. I’ve never seen the hive like this.

The lights go out, plunging us into darkness. I can hear the chaos all around me.

Definitely not my scene.

V

With howls and screams, they rush the stage, shoving at the barricade and the security detail, tossing the hired muscle aside like paper dolls in their gleeful rage. With my own berserker haze fading, I rock back, shell-shocked. When I wipe the sweat from my eyes, my hand comes away smeared with black.

“What was
that
?” Jax grabs me by the arm and hauls me backstage.

“Nothing. Just go!” I’m clinging to the grid, but I could topple off any second now; I can feel the energy snaking over my skin, in between my ears, threatening to bounce me.

Emergency lighting flickers to life around us, and my stomach clenches. I would puke up my dinner, if I’d eaten anything; instead I manage one good dry heave.

“You’d better fucking run!” someone shouts at me. Might be a bodyguard. Could be Hellcat Maggie herself. Doesn’t matter, because I’m already skimming down the hall. A hand clamps down roughly on the back of my dress, but I duck and twist. The fabric gives way, exposing my back down to the crack of my ass, and beads rain down on the floor. I whirl around and face my attacker. I don’t know who she is or why she’s chasing me, but adrenaline brings my fist up to connect with her face. She falls back, taking down the three people behind her.

A knife to my throat, trailed down my neck, along my shoulder. Blood. Screams of pain . . .
My
screams.

It’s like my finger’s on the trigger, firing off shots from a memory gun.

I don’t want to remember any of this, damn it. The mind-scrubs are supposed to wipe out everything: Conversations, the faces of friends-turned-strangers. The way he smelled. The way he touched me.

But I remember pain like that. I remember the blood . . .

Sasha stumbles into me and shoves me out of the past. “The back door’s this way!” she gasps between harried steps, her arms full of equipment, wiring spilling out of her embrace and trailing behind her like a disemboweled octopus.

“Not without Little Dead Thing!” Instead of turning right, I veer left. Another left turn, and I’m back at the dressing room. The styling team already evacuated, leaving behind a debris field of sequins and translucent powder and bits of black lace. Pushing me to one side, Jax grabs a black nylon bag and crams her gloves and mixing console inside. Sasha reaches for her laptop case and tries to wrestle the cord-tangle into submission.

I end up flat on the floor, pulling an irate and hissing cat out from under the threadbare velvet couch. “Come on, love. Time to bail.”

With the girls at my heels and Little Dead Thing in my arms, I twist open the heavy stage door. The dark outside surprises me—sporadic backup lights have activated down countless shadowed blocks—but the limo is waiting, engine running, headlights carving out an escape route. I clamber inside, the memories of screams and blood still fresh in my mind as I teeter on the edge of the grid.

M

The music is gone, but Her voice remains. My bones resonate with it.

Trailing my hand down the length of the counter, I quickly retrace my steps, leaving the elevated bar behind for the chaos of the pit. People ricochet off me in the darkness, all grasping for something. Crashing through the crowd, I find one of the propped-open doors. Memory guides me down the halls.

There are still people in the alcoves, going at it. Unbelievable.
Too bad the grid’s not up to harness the energy from
those
exchanges
.

Another collision with an addled fan sends me stumbling, and I grab the nearest thing in reach: a velvet curtain.

Not the same curtain—wrong club, wrong time—but close enough.
I don’t want to remember this right now.
I tear the curtain free from its rings and hurl it aside, taking off down the hall.
Gotta keep moving. Maybe I can catch the Skulls before they flee the scene.

I’m one of the first outside. It was blind luck that a few stumbling pit-dwellers made it out here before me. Some crouch against the wall, huddled together for comfort. Others brawl in the street or just stand around, in total meltdown.

Something’s missing.

Buildings all around us are dark, shadows shaped by moonlight and the glow of distant, unaffected neighborhoods. No thrum-collectors to harness clubgoer energy, no substations to process it, no glass-globes transmitting wireless energy back to the citizens.

The hum is gone. It’s been with me every second since I got back, but now it’s gone.

That’s insane.
She did all this. Who
is
this girl?

Tearing ass around the front of the building, I sprint down the alley toward the backstage doors. The band must have slipped out the back during the melee.

I two-step up some crates onto the loading dock, just in time to catch the limo’s taillights as it speeds off down the road.

V

We left the speakers behind, but static still crackles between my ears. I’m breathing hard and clutching Little Dead Thing to my chest as the limo takes the first corner way too fast. Jax and Sasha end up on the floorboards with their equipment bags, and I slam into the door. Even though my chest just kept his head from getting bashed in, Little Dead Thing scratches the crap out of my cleavage trying to escape.

When the car slows down enough, I turn him loose. “Fine, you little asshole, go.”

He picks a careful path across the seat, curls up in the corner, hikes a leg, and starts to lick his junk. Probably just to reassure himself that everything’s where it’s supposed to be.

Everyone else looks way more rattled. Sasha’s still on the floor, cradling her laptop like a child with a janked-up toy, trying to get it to boot up.

“Come on, baby. Come on.” She makes a low, grieving noise, a whine that probably only dogs and I can hear, then shouts with triumph when the screen bathes her in blue light. “Yes!” Leaning over to squint at the screen, she starts keystroking like it’s the only way to get enough oxygen. “I’m up. Everything’s still here, but my case is jacked and I can’t access any of the remote files while the grid is down.”

“What the fresh shit was that, exactly, Vee?” Jax demands again, hauling herself into the seat opposite me.

“Something I’ve been working on awhile.” If I’m not careful, she’ll boot me in the shins with one of those platforms, so I shift my legs to one side.

She aims higher and kicks me in the thigh instead, dislodging a dozen iridescent beads and putting a new hole in my skirt. “Not the song.”

“It’s not my fault. Maggie probably had the new collectors wired in ass-backwards.”

“Nothing about her wiring or backwards ass explains
that.
” Jax jerks her thumb at the buildings on either side of the street. Windows that should be glowing white are as dark as black eyes punched into someone’s face. The horrible orange emergency lighting reminds me of a cheap Halloween carnival. “You overloaded the grid, for fuck’s sake. That shouldn’t even be possible.”

Of course Jax took that personally.

Her family—two dads, a mom, a couple of older siblings—are all bioenergy specialists. According to Jax, they were “part of Cyrene’s genesis, theorizing a radical alternative to the usual clean-energy solutions. Not only that, but they assembled the original team that developed the thrum-collectors and brought the grid online.” I can’t eye-roll hard enough every time she says shit like that.

When push came to shove, Jax followed the family’s scientific tradition in her own way, isolating frequencies and rhythms that trigger higher thrum production in clubgoers, making her one of the best DJs the city has ever seen. Cyrene might be her vice-infused playground, but it’s also where she’s honed the skills that brought her to Damon’s attention in the first place.

“Obviously, there are flaws in the system.” A factory specializing in throbbing sets up shop just behind my eyeballs, and I pinch the bridge of my nose. Headaches are standard after a show, but this promises to be a full-flare migraine.
Still, there are worse things.
“Maybe you should discuss it next time the family visits.”

“This won’t wait,” Jax says. “Corporate’s going to be up your ass the minute we get back to the Loft.”

“She’s right,” Sasha adds, still 90 percent preoccupied with file recovery. “Damon’s going to want answers.”

With a scowl, Jax pulls out a flask and unscrews the lid. “He can get in line.” She chugs the contents, not offering to share.

The second she pauses to take a breath, I swipe it out of her hand and take a deep pull. There’s at least six kinds of liquor and some designer street drug mixed up in there. Tastes like lighter fluid mixed with broken glass.

Maybe it can cut this voice from my throat.

I hand her back the empty flask and rub my hand across my mouth. “I’ll think of something. I always do.”

M

Instinctively, I start mapping my route. Stretch limos aren’t exactly made for the back alleys of the Odeaglow, so the options are limited. They can take a left either two blocks up or three.

Mentally, I’m nine steps ahead of my body, scaling the surrounding buildings to nab the best vantage point. I crouch and jump down off the loading dock, but I only take two steps toward the fire escape before slamming into somebody. We both stumble back a few feet.

I’m first to respond. “Sorry, man, didn’t see you th—”

I cut myself off. He’s framed in the high beams of an SUV that just pulled up, and I recognize the uniform, not to mention the heavy-duty flashlight he bends down to retrieve.

Crap. Should’ve expected this.
They were already out in force to assist the fresh meat. Factor in the blackout, and you’re halfway to a greyface parade.

He smacks the flashlight against his palm a few times, and the beam keeps flickering. Must not bother to keep it charged. The power grid’s usually so reliable that you can phantom power whatever you need from the ambient thrum.

“Hey, son, can’t have you wandering around in the dark like this. Come on up front. We’re getting everyone scanned, cleaned up, and home safe.” He continues to smack the flashlight, and I can’t take my eyes off it.

If that has a nanotech scanner in it, I’m screwed.
“Oh, that’s all right, I’m just fine.”
Whack!
“Just hoping to grab an autograph . . .”
Whack!
“You know how it is . . .”
Whack!

The beam flares and hits my face for a split second. Long enough to detect I’m off-grid.

“Hold it. Stay right where you are. We’ve got a runner!” he yells, alerting his pals to my unauthorized presence. I hear footsteps pounding toward us.

I get one chance at this.
I shove him hard in the chest with both hands, knocking him two steps back and onto the uneven sewer grate. His legs go out from under him, and he topples backward.

I make a break for it as he hits the ground with a satisfying thud. Two quick steps up the wall, and I jump, grabbing the fixed ladder and scrambling onto the fire escape. Diving over a concrete barrier, I tuck and roll into the parking garage next door. I hear the commotion below: The staticky blare of walkie-talkies, snippets of “mobilize,” “secure perimeter,” and “bring him in.” The crunch of boots arriving, the ominous whine of stun batons going live. These won’t be keep-the-peace greyfaces; these’ll be the hardcore Facilitators brought in to handle threats to the city itself.

I run, and I don’t bother looking back. I don’t know what all of them are carrying, so it’s best to put as much distance between them and me as possible.

Bathed in the sickly orange of the emergency lighting, I race down three rows of cars and scan the ceiling for a telltale gap between this level and the next one up.
There
. I run toward the nearest truck, hopping up the front bumper, over the hood, and onto the roof. I leap, reaching for a small ledge built into the rafters, and snag it with my fingertips.

Tires squealing against asphalt means they’re on their way up.
Gotta move faster.

I lever myself onto the ledge and hop up and over the security wall, tumbling onto the rough flooring of level three. Rolling clear of the nearest cars, I get back to my feet and stumble right into the path of an approaching SUV.

Damn, these guys are fast.
I break left and head for the outer ring of cars, hemmed in by yellow lines and the concrete retaining wall of the garage. I can’t help but think of Her and that vicious voice as I charge over a parked station wagon, cross the barricade, and hurl myself out into open space.

Legs tucked, arms out, I soar. Untouched. Untouchable. Master of my own fate. Beholden to no one and nothing.

Except gravity.

My arc peaks a third of the way across the alley, and I do some quick math midflight. My target’s twelve or thirteen feet out and about four feet down from the takeoff point. A few seconds later, I tumble onto the warehouse roof, rolling to my feet with a gasp.
More like five and a half feet down.