Free Fall. Laura Anne Gilman

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ

      Or been sent right into them. The entire job, a setup? Or…it doesn’t matter, Valere! Just get out of there!

      “Come on, you musta heard the stories.” He shifted, and Wren could feel him straddling her, sitting on her upper thighs. Then he leaned forward, covering her entire body, and she felt his erection pushing against her ass, even through her jeans. “Like dipping into an electrical socket, I’ve heard. Hottest shit ever.”

      Thou shalt not kill, a memory said, oh so quietly in the back of her brain.

      “Yeah, and you hear what else they say? They’re not human, man!”

      “So?” George clearly wasn’t worried about that. He shifted again, one hand leaving her shoulder to reach around and wrestle with the snap of her jeans. “Come on man, help me. I’ll let you have a taste, after I wear her out, if you’re too scared to get in first.”

      The other guy didn’t sound tempted. “The Man hears, you won’t think it worth it. Aw, hell. You remember what happened with the last one we popped? Bitch near tore his head off. You gotta get some, damage her first and you can get in and out before she dies.”

      George didn’t stop his movements. “Whaddreyou, sick or something? I’m not doing a corpse! Anyway, I like ’em when they fight. Spicy.” His fingers got under her waistband, and started moving down, shoving aside her underwear.

      The last one we popped…echoed in Wren’s brain, rattling around like dried beans. Bastards. They got off on this. They thought they had the right to do whatever they wanted, because someone told them they were superior, that they were better.

      The frustration of the past few months, the anger building up for the past year, rolled like the tide against her shores, and she was so very tired of holding it back, of not being able to vent her emotions on the world that kept trying to slap her down.

      Control, she told herself. Control. But her core was suspended in black tar, and current raged overhead and underfoot, and blood ran like the river tides. She could not feel anything other than that, oblivious to the outside world, not caring what was being done to her body as she fought for control she wasn’t sure she even wanted, any more.

      The third man spoke then, finally, breaking her out of her mental prison. “I’ll kill both of you, you touch that thing.” It didn’t sound like he was bluffing.

      “What, you’re trying to protect it?”

      There was a snick of a knife, and George’s fingers stopped for an instant.

      “Don’t be even more of a moron than you have to be. You’re human. It’s not. Don’t sully yourself.”

      “You’d kill him? For that?” The second man, incredulous.

      It’s not human. Three on one. They’re armed. Thou shalt not kill. ‘The last one we popped.’

      A memory: of bodies facedown and faceup, sprawled in their own blood, pools of black on dirty snow. Entrails, shit, and teargas making her gasp against tears. Ohm’s bane, flickering dark red against the dawn sky, up and down the skyward-arching form of the Brooklyn Bridge. A long black car, driving away. Sergei’s face, stone and sadness.

      Inside, Wren felt something give way; a brick wall under assault, an earthen ditch crumbling. She grabbed for the pieces, held it together. But it was slipping under her fingertips.

      “Aid!” An involuntary blast of streaky purple current like a signal flare shot into the ether, the agreed-upon signal of the Truce Patrol, whatever was left of it. “Aid and assistance down here! Vigilantes!”

      And then she was falling, falling into the tar, falling into the darkness where even current did not shine.

      She had asked for help. She wasn’t going to wait around for it.

      It was a simple matter—almost instinctive—to reach for the proper fugue state. Once, she would have had to do deep breathing, ground and center, concentrate. During the past year, Wren Valere had used her current more on a daily basis in order to survive, to protect those around her, than she used to call up in a week’s time, even including jobs. She had stretched and grown, almost unknowing; so much so that now she simply let go and fell down into her core.

      The first awareness was always the sound. Dry slithering, and hissing. Paper-against-spark, the insentient patience of current, coiling and recoiling in an endless loop.

      Next were the colors. She opened her not-eyes and colors consumed her. Dark and scarlet reds and royal-blues, dark greens and iridescent purples, streaks of gold and silver, and underneath it all the dark, dark muscled bodies of a color she had never been able to name.

      And then the warmth that seeped into her bones. Stone-warmth, like lava rising from the gut of the earth. It called, seduced, tried to make her give in, relax, come down into the pit and lose her way.

      The moment she did that, the current would destroy her. Self-control was everything in the core.

      Come to me, she told it. Not a single thread, the way she normally did, or even a braiding, but all of it. It surged up in response to her call, her will easily overpowering them. Sparking and sizzling into her veins, bloating her with power. Not you, she said to the dark, dark current, sticky like tar.

      ???!!?

      Not you, she repeated. She didn’t know why, but something deeper even than her core warned her away from it, denied it access.

      Dimly she was aware of her body shoved forward, her pants around her thighs. Hands gripping her wrists, a knee between her shoulder blades. The snap of latex. She almost laughed. They thought it would get that far?

      “For God’s sake, I’ll buy you a whore. I’ll buy you two.” The third man, again. “Just kill it already. Once it’s dead, its familiar will be unprotected, and we can finish the job.”

      P.B.? Her thoughts fluttered. P.B.!

      The demon could protect itself. That wasn’t the point. She hadn’t been thorough enough vetting this job, hadn’t been careful enough, and now they thought, these pitiful, rubber-suited Nulls thought they would clear the board, with their flick-knives, their dicks, and their self-righteous bigotry?

      They thought they were better than her, because they could not feel the current in everything around them?

      The smell of shit and tear gas filled her nostrils again, and she breathed it in, deep. Her attention off of it for that split second, the black thread in her core rounded in on itself, and no longer tar but black lava, struck upward, straight into her spine.

      Wren almost laughed as the full impact of her core surged through her, crackling and snarling. No longer snakes, not serpents, but dragons now, full-winged and fire-breathing and deadly to behold.

      They erupted from her, soaring free and high. Black opal-bodied, all the colors of the universe contained within, the hot sludge of their blood thrumming like a bass drum. Thunderheads formed around them, great anvils of Thor, and their wings smashed them, drank them in, filled their roars with the sound of thunder and the cold buffeting rain. Tangled and soaked, Wren opened her throat and screamed with them, her arms thrown into the air. The current jumping from them to her and then back again until welts formed on her skin, creating a pattern of diamond scales.

СКАЧАТЬ