Vicki Pettersson - Cheat the Grave

“So that’s why you’re here.” A slow smirk finally curled at the corners of Nicola’s black lacquered mouth.

“Should have figured.”

“Solange was right,” Trish singsonged.

The name alone sent shivers along my limbs, and apparently Diana felt the same way because she shushed Trish with a harsh glare. Maybe she’d done something to anger the woman too. Too bad for her…for us both. Solange’s was the sort of anger that blotted out entire planets. Basically, the difference between her and God was that God didn’t require the breath from your body, the bone from your marrow, the white from your eyes. Solange did.

Fuck the sound, I thought, and began looking for a way out instead. The other women chuckled, but didn’t look like they blamed me. “She sent Mackie after me,” I told them.

Trish shrugged, smiling sweetly. “He probably just wants to talk.”

Yeah, and porn stars just wanted to cuddle.

“Carlos?” I called the name tentatively, looking toward the ceiling. It echoed in that mix master’s scratch. Water continued to pour down the glass walls. I sighed.

“She sent him because you’re a danger to us all,” Nicola said, still stiff and autoerotic, like everyone else was incidental to her existence.

Diana flicked her fingers at me. “Joanna’s no danger to me.”

“She is if Solange catches you with her.”

“Stop saying her name!” This time Diana curled her delicate hands into fists, squeezing tight before forcibly relaxing them. “Besides, she doesn’t rule me.”

“She rules everyone whose soul has been melded into her sky!” Nicola said bitterly. Her sky, I thought, shuddering, remembering the planetarium.

“So you’ve all had parts of yourself put in her sky?”

Diana snorted. “It’s the first thing she does when someone new arrives. But you protected yourself from it somehow, and she hasn’t forgotten it. She thinks you’re after her power.”

“I don’t know why she wasn’t able to touch me.” I’d come awake while she’d been fashioning my gem, some how deforming it and keeping her from using it. “Besides, not everyone is after power.”

Nicola and Diana scoffed, but Trish lifted her chin. “Maybe Joanna just wanted to watch, like us.” She turned to me, wide-eyed. “Is that why you chose the water room?”

“I’ve no idea why I’m here.”

Yet even as I said it, the bottom dweller sound echoed again. Arching my head, I followed its path as it vaulted overhead, then fell like invisible rain into the basin sitting between Diana and Nicola and their four hammocks. I strained toward it like I had gills. What was that?

No, not a basin, I thought, frowning as I took a step to follow. A well.

Trish motioned me forward. “Come. Look.”

“No!” Nicola hissed.

Ignoring her, Trish slipped into a third hammock, and pointed to a fourth. I inched forward to peer in the thick crystal basin.

My anti-Olivia self was reflected in the water-dark eyes and choppy, blunt cut. Strong, lithe limbs, and a severe expression to match my mood. But I stared past my reflection, wondering where sound could go. Unlike the rest of the room, it was ice still. I waved my hand above the small pool.

“Not there.” Nicola was back in slideshow mode, bowl-cut fringe still perfectly arranged over the bridge of her nose. Her face was upturned, the shifting sands of the mirrored skies sending light to dance over her profile. She looked like a Roman bust, hard edges cut and sliced into soft curves.

“The water is merely a conduit for sound. You have to relax into the hammock, and once you’ve caught the rhythm of the room, look up.”

So I did, leaning back carefully, gaze on the blurred ceiling as I began to rock.

“You have to wait for it, since you are attracted to it, and not the other way around.”

Whatever “it” was, I thought sullenly.

“It’s not fair,” Trish sighed as we waited, airy voice rising, flowing upstream. “When are we going to get a turn?”

Diana hummed her agreement. “She gets to do whatever she wants.”

“Shh,” Nicola chided harshly. “She’ll hear you.”

But then I heard it , coming at me like it was shot from a pistol, but also from another room, another world.

“Ready?” Nicola turned her sharp chin my way, and this time her fringe parted enough for me to momentarily glimpse a startling blue eye before the hair fell back into place like a curtain. “Say hello to your mysterious sound.”

The sound buried itself in the basin. Then the haze above us parted like curtains, and light from the basin beamed like a projector onto the ceiling.

He lay in a skiff shaped like a lily petal, made of glossy teak and edged with imposing symbols. Immediately recognizing one of them, the same as that carved upon the treasure chest at Caine’s, I gasped. He stirred in his sleep, rolling his head on the red velvet tufted pillow until his body positioning mirrored mine exactly. I lifted my hand to my mouth in shock. He did the same. I ran it through my hair. He echoed the movement in his sleep. Meanwhile I took in the sight of him-white-blond cropped hair, thick neck, wide shoulders, skin as dark as Carlos’s-committing to memory how vulnerable the fierce man looked. Hunter…but laid out here in his true identity: Jaden Jacks.

“Oh, this is interesting.” Nicola’s reluctance veered to interest as our movements synched again. I dropped my hand to my chest. He did the same. “It really is a soul connection.”

“Solange is going to be pissed.” Diana.

Singing again, Trish. “Something tells me she already knows.”

It’s Miss Sola wants you dead, girl .

“But that one would almost be worth the risk,” Trish murmured, shifting luxuriously. “I mean, since we’re destined to be incinerated anyway.”

I swallowed back the metallic taste in my throat, ignored the drugs crackling like sparklers in my bloodstream, and lifted my hand in the air. Still asleep, Jaden Jacks did the same. I’d kick myself later over how lovesick I was acting in front of women who would have no qualms about using it against me, but for now my heart pounded in raw beats, my body knowing what it wanted despite my mind’s holler to cease and desist.

“Hunter-” I whispered, the scratchy echo of my voice clanging clumsily against the ceiling. I winced…and his eyes rocketed open.

His gaze burned with the same honeyed hue I remembered, though it was alive with horror as he found my face. He lifted his head from the red pillow, lunging for me, but his head banged against our ceiling like glass.

I strained upward as well, echoing the movement, but the hammock wouldn’t release me…and neither would his shocked gaze. “Hunter?”

“Jo?” The strange face with familiar eyes went rigid. “Oh my God. What are you doing here? I’ve been trying-”

“No!”

No warning. Just that one strained, screeched word. The women around me screamed and scrambled as a face of feral beauty filled the sky, looming, thrusting forward to distend the sky. The others fought to untangle themselves from their hammocks, yet caught in Solange’s gaze, I couldn’t move.

She didn’t scream again. She didn’t have to. Her original cry never ceased as she too strained forward, unfortunately with greater result. Her face broke against the projection, the reflected water wrapping around her bulging eyes, like Saran wrap. Rage carved her brow, and pressing harder, she leered. Her teeth went black. Her eyes white.

The singing streams shifted into raging rapids, and my hammock began to shake. The other women were free-

Nicola, unsurprisingly, had moved the quickest-but they couldn’t find an exit to the room. A sound like nails over a chalkboard etched its way over my spine and a hairline crack formed along the walls. Sand began filtering in, slowly at first, then pouring and pooling as the walls began to shake and splinter.