Scarred

"Come back to me, firebird," he whispered. "You know you want to."

My pulse stumbled. I scrambled for a rational response, when all I wanted to do was roll over and surrender. Whisper his name, let him do whatever he pleased with me. I will keep cool. I won't lose control. I won't…

"Vincent, listen," I insisted, shaking. Good start. But what the hell could I say? How do you crack unbreakable conviction like his? "This is all a mistake. Whatever you think there is between us…"

"Whatever I think?" His eyes flashed a dangerous gold, and his grip tightened on my wrist, a bright edge of malice. "Shall I show you? Must we cover those lessons again? You know what happens when you disappoint me."

Oh, God, did I.

I trembled, lost. What was I thinking? Reasoning with him was pointless. The magnetism between us was beyond thought, beyond common sense. Oldest story in the book.

I'd loved him. And in his warped way, he'd loved me. How could anyone reason with that?

I felt him laugh, a frisson of unhinged delight at the game. His whisper scorched my earlobe, challenging. "Oh, this is precious. Do you surrender? Or must I subdue you all over again?"

I shuddered, and fled.

He didn't follow. Just let me run.

The fog swallowed me, cold and heartless. I didn't stop until I'd passed the end of the bridge, where the fishing pier's lights struggled through curling mist, and sprinted across the freeway into the park.

I collapsed, panting, against a tree trunk. My heartbeat galloped. My skin itched all over, like deathworms wriggled in my living flesh, and I doubled over and spewed my non-existent dinner into the dirt.

My eyes poured and I choked on burning bile. What the hell had I expected? He was merciless, insidious, every move a cunning gambit to kill me or trap me or make me do something I dreaded, all just to prove he was superior. To prove he still owned me.

I knew that was how he operated. So why had I agreed to meet him? Why didn't I just delete his damn text and go to bed like a normal person?

But I already knew the answer.

We'd been lovers, sure, and that part was incredible. Unprecedented. I could admit that. Still, I'm not a slave to that kind of lust. Sex is great, but it's just sex.

But all the common sense in the world didn't change the awful truth that I'd liked how he'd made me feel. Giddy, alive, free from crippling self-doubt and eager to take on the world. Loving Vincent had made me happy.

I wiped my acid-ripped mouth. I already had a splitting headache, like I'd cracked a machete through my skull, levering the bones apart to let all those black and ugly secrets ooze out. Now my guts hurt, too. I wanted to crawl into a hole, pull dirt over my head and sleep forever.

But I knew how to escape from too much thinking. Temporarily, at least… and my nerves twanged bad banjo tunes as I imagined Glimmer's disappointment. Glimmer never said anything, never scolded me outright. He just looked at me, with those warm starlit eyes, and lately, I'd been unable to meet his gaze.

Your friends despise you. Vincent's accusation pierced my skull with hot needles and popped my guilt like a bubble.

Fuck it. I yanked my mask from my pocket and tied it on. My damp fingers smeared the leather, and I wiped the sweat away. Vincent was right: my family already scorned me. And so did Glimmer. What did I care if I gave them one more reason?

Because it's always just one more reason. Then another. And another, until the little reasons pile up so high, they smother you. That's how villains are made.

What the fuck ever.

Ten minutes later, I stalked down a narrow street in Castro towards a place I knew, an underground dive where masks were just one way people hid from each other. Rats snickered in the garbage at my feet, and I kicked them aside. Down greasy steps, through the rusted door.

Inside, dark shapes hunkered in dim blue light, a snatch of meaningless sounds: music, groans, sobs, vacant laughter. Chains hung from the ceiling in drifting smoke. I inhaled, let the stinking air numb my senses, stumbled up to the bar.

Triple brainfuck with a twist of sordid, thanks, and keep the change.

The guy on the next stool—thin, his once-proud muscles wasting, nice clothes but old and unwashed—clinked his glass against mine, and we drank. Like Glimmer, he bore scars on the inside of his wrist. Unlike Glimmer, he looked ready to try it all over again. Search humandisintegration and you'll get a picture of this guy.

His phone lay beside him on the bar. One of Vincent's creations, an obsolete model with cracked glass. He wore his wedding ring with that wishful air that bespoke failure and tragedy. Probably carried pics of his estranged kids in his wallet, or on that ancient phone. Too young, I thought as I gulped harsh alcohol, to be so broken.

Aren't we all?

I banged the empty glass down. "Rough day?"

He lit a cigarette, ash flaring. "Fuckin' A."

"Same shit, different year."

"Sing it, sister." He offered me his smoke. Not one from the pack. I took it. What the hell, right? If this was his pick-up routine, I was about the best he could expect.

I inhaled, relishing the horrid gritty flavor, and let my special senses sparkle. I didn't taste augment. Only sour despair. He met my gaze, the wide brown eyes of an animal caught in a trap.

Was that what Vincent saw when he looked at me: prey? An inferior creature, fit only to be exploited or consumed?

I passed the cigarette back. Glimmer's eyes aren't brown, I thought mistily, alcohol already muddling my underfed brain. They're blue. Darkest midnight blue, the shade of the sky beyond stars. I didn't even know Glimmer's real name.

And that was relevant how?

The guy pointed at my glass and signaled to the barkeep for another. He took in my mask, my scarred cheek, let his gaze wander down to my chest. "You got real superpowers?"

Augments, idiot. I didn’t bother to correct him. I just grabbed his throat with an invisible fist of force, and dragged him in. “What do you think?”

~ 5 ~ (#u63e7c8ce-943b-5dfe-abee-c0561b1a1f92)

By the time I got home, orange dawn slanted through the trees, and I was wide-eyed and popping out of my skin after a gutful of drink and a couple of hours of muttering sleep. I hadn't been followed, or detected by Sentinels. I was pretty confident of that. I was remorseful, disgusted, so furious at myself I could scream, but that didn't make me an idiot.

That guy from the bar—I'd filed his name under too much information—had been sweet, and totally on board with my sordid-brainfuck plan, but by the time we'd gotten down to business, he was too drunk to finish, and I'd been too restless. He wept on my shoulder. I threw up in his bathtub. Altogether a fitting experience. I should be satisfied.

But I wasn't.

Birds chortled and trilled as I stomped through the forest, and I scowled up at them with half a mind to tear their tree down. "What in hell are you so happy about?"

They didn't answer. Typical. The world's divided into two kinds: happy people, who don't need a reason, and the rest of us, who can't find a reason to save ourselves.

I slouched into the refectory, where the family Fortune (plus assorted hangers-on) were getting stuck into breakfast. Uncle Mike was sitting straight-backed at a table, munching peanut-butter toast and thumbing through messages on his Glimmer-hacked Blackberry. He waved at me, a wry grin on his lined face.

I shrugged, and Mike shook his head in mock scolding. My uncle looked as I imagined Adonis would in thirty years' time: weathered and wise but still handsome, a mesh of silver through his blond hair, his eyes clear with nary a blue twinkle faded. One of those hip older dudes who has to fight off ambitious young tarts with a scythe, if Mike was into that sort of thing, which he wasn't, and for good reason.

Silver anti-conducting don't-kill-everyone bracelets glinted around my uncle's wrists. Static electricity crackled over the pale metal, his latent power battling to escape. It's tricky to be a playboy when you're such a lethal weapon.

Mike can fire lightning bolts. He's a menace, really, and it was only good luck for Sapphire City that all those years ago he and Dad decided to fight crime, not commit it. Blackstrike and Illuminatus, merciless scourge of Gallery villains from Oakland to the Bay.

Dad was the eldest, and with his power over shadows and darkness, he'd always been the thinker in their ass-kicking double act. These days, Mike was content just to give advice and let Adonis take charge. One of those rare, lucky people who managed to sustain both an augment and a life, or at least he did, before all this happened.