One Kiss: An Apocalyptic Urban Fantasy (Transmissions from The International Council for the Exploration of the Universe., #1) (3 page)

"
How many of the people you donated to survived?"

"They all came through the operation healthy."

"Did you know their names?

"Does it matter?"

"We may be interested in tracking them down."

She shook her head, holding my eyes for just a second. "None of them could have survived long after."

"How did you?"

"I always survive.”

<<<<>>>>

I
had to hurry to make it to band practice on time. If you don't have talent at least you can cultivate punctuality. Michael, our lead singer, was there sipping on a bottle of green tea. He nodded when I walked into the space and checked his watch. We'd been working together since Megan got really sick.

Towards the end, about two months before she disappeared, Megan admitted she couldn't work anymore, and said that I had to find another band. I didn't want to play with anyone else ever, but we had bills to pay. It wasn't hard to find someone who would take me. Like a good moon, I reflected the light of my sun beautifully.

The practice space belonged to our bassist, Emmanuel, who never showed up on time. He saw Megan and me play a couple of times, and I'm pretty sure that they had a thing for a minute. Emmanuel invited me to join Higgs and The Bosons. I had a feeling he was regretting it. It was clear from the look on Michael's face that he was.

Andrew, who everyone called Dre, nodded to me as he walked in. He played the drums. Dre was a tall, lanky guy who looked good in a worn T-shirt with floppy hair that danced around his head when he played.

I tuned my violin, listening to the instrument, asking it to speak to me. We used to make magic, Megan, me, and my fiddle. Now I just practiced. Nothing special ever seemed to come through me. This was just more evidence that without Megan I'd never make it.

A great tiredness came over me then. I put the instrument down and leaned against the wall, trying not to lose it. Megan always stressed how important it was to have faith. But continuing to have faith that I'd ever see Megan again, dead or alive, was dangerously illogical.  A searing anger ran through me suddenly. My cheeks flushed and I felt the beat of my heart banging. How could she leave me!

"You okay?" I looked up and saw Emmanuel standing right in front of me. I nodded and swallowed. His black curls, untrimmed and wild, seemed like a crown. His eyes were the color of milk chocolate and framed by long black lashes. I couldn't look at them, so dropped my gaze to his perfectly formed pink lips. "Are you sure?" he asked.

Tears welled in my eyes and I turned away. The hunger and exhaustion I'd felt earlier was overwhelming me. All I could hear was blood rushing in my ears. "Everyone's here, so let's get started," Michael announced.

"Just a minute," Emmanuel said. He stepped closer and I felt his breath on my shoulder. "You're going to be okay, Darling." The sound of my name in his voice settled me. I turned, looking at him through my hair, like a black veil between us. He smiled gently at me, almost more with his eyes than any other part of him.

"You ready to play?" Michael asked with an edge in his voice.

Emmanuel nodded and I felt my head moving with his. He picked up his bass and hung the strap across his broad shoulders. I noticed the veins in his forearms as he laid his fingers on the strings.

"Darling?" Michael said. "Uh, can we have the pleasure of your company today?"

"Sure," I said, barely above a whisper.

"Let's start with 'Drawn to You'," Michael said.

Dre counted off 1, 2, 3, clacking his sticks together. Emmanuel laid down the bass while Dre thumped out the beat. The beginning of the song was sorrowful. The story of a man drawn toward the thing that hurts him most. I pulled my bow against the strings, eyes closed, trying to invoke the sounds that belonged there. The notes came, but without the feeling it was drab and flat.

And that was how practice went. All the boys played with their hearts, and I struggled not to miss anything. We practiced our whole set several times, playing particular attention to the single we planned to open with at our next gig. Our new manager had set it up. A couple of important people were coming to see us. The scent of a record contract was in the air.

As the last song ended Michael glared at me, his eyes slits of anger. "What the fuck?" he asked. 

"Hey!" Emmanuel said.

Michael turned on him. "She's fucking it up, Emmanuel."

Emmanuel, his bass still hanging from his shoulders, stepped in front of Michael, blocking my view of him. "Lay off her," he said quietly.

"It was your idea to invite her, you fix her," Michael said and then he turned, picked up his green tea, and took a swig. He looked back at me and I felt the disappointment and anger coming off him. I sucked, and it pissed him off. I kept my eyes down, concentrating on the grain of my indigo jeans. He snorted and then I heard his loud footsteps and the door crashing open, then slamming shut.

I put my fiddle back in her case and closed the clasps, too upset to even enjoy the clicking sound they made. As I stood, Emmanuel approached me, his hands in his pockets, his bass left in its stand. "You ever been to the Villa Relma cemetery?" he asked.

I shrugged. "I've passed it."

Villa Relma was one of the city's more popular cemeteries. Tourists flocked there to see the graves of some of the areas most notorious residents. It wasn't big but within the crumbling walls three mayors, a famous priestess, and one of the biggest movie stars of the last century were buried.

"You want to go, with me? Now?" he asked, scrunching up his shoulders in a question.

"Why?"

"It's a place I've always found comforting."

"Why?"

He shrugged again, his head hanging down, and then he raised his eyes to mine. I didn't have time to look away before I'd locked onto him. I felt myself pulling toward him, sinking into those rich brown eyes. "So what do you say? Want to go?"

"Okay," I said, taking a tentative step toward him. He broke away from my gaze and, reaching down, grabbed my violin case before turning to the exit. I followed him, tripping over myself a little, my head feeling light. I should eat something, I thought briefly, before following him out into the dying day.

"
So you didn't realize there was anything special about Emmanuel?"

Darling smiled and dragged on her cigarette. She leaned her head back and blew a long stream of smoke toward the ceiling. "I knew he was special. I just didn't know how special."

I felt stunned by this revelation. How had she been in the same room as him and not known what he was?

"Remember that in the world I was raised in we didn't believe in beings like him." She paused, leaning forward to ash her cigarette. "At least, I didn't." She leaned back again and her eyes touched mine for just a moment. "I thought it stupid to believe in something like him."

"But you went with him to the cemetery."

"I was desperate."

<<<<>>>>

W
e were not the only people visiting Villa Relma Cemetery as darkness fell. It was one of the last cool sunsets before the spring crept up on us, filling the air with heat and moisture. Already the days were becoming uncomfortable; soon the evenings would join them.

Emmanuel knew his way around, and I followed him between the rows of mausoleums and crypts. Some were crumbling to the ground. The metal fences around them had collapsed under fallen chunks of the structures they were meant to protect. Spurts of growth, green and raggedy, shot from between the bricks, reaching toward the sun, making life work where it could.

As we passed a simple crypt, the headstone impossible to read after so many rains, I stopped, placing my hands for a moment on the crooked fence surrounding it. The peeling black paint crackled under my touch.

"Everything okay?" Emmanuel asked.

"Sure," I said not taking my eyes off the sarcophagus, its lid tilted to the side. "What do you think happened?"

Emmanuel stepped next to me and looked at the gravesite over my shoulder. He was almost a head taller than me. "What do you mean?" he asked. I felt his breath against the crown of my head.

"What would make it buckle like that? Why would the lid be askew?"

Emmanuel shrugged. "Storms, tree roots, construction, all sorts of stuff shifts the earth."

I stared deeply into the dark space that the cockeyed lid exposed. Emmanuel touched my elbow. An electric spark shocked us both. I  jumped away from him. "Sorry," he said, his hand hanging in the air where my elbow had just been.

"It's okay," I said, rubbing at the places his finger pads had touched. I looked down at them half expecting burns. 

"Come on," he said with a smile. I followed him to a small, unfenced, squat mausoleum. Black dirt clung to the texture of the cement facade and gathered in the cracks. The entire thing was covered in question marks. They were written in groups of three—???—some small and tight, others scrawled. The structure was a bit taller than me. Candles, beaded necklaces, and mini bottles of liquor covered the roof's edge and lined the base. Envelopes and folded scraps of paper leaned against the worn, unreadable, marble plaque where it met the cemetery path.

I watched Emmanuel's shoulders move underneath his thin T-shirt as he placed my violin case on the ground. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a couple of pennies and two sugar packets. He held them out in his palm toward me. His head was bent down looking at me and his dark curls fell around his face, making me feel almost like we were in a fort together, that no one could see us. He smiled at me. I kept my eyes on his lips. "Go ahead," he said. "Take a penny and a sugar packet and offer it to her."

"Who?"

"Suki, Darling. She is a powerful spirit. I think she can help you."

I looked over at the shrine. "You really believe in this kind of stuff?" I asked.

He shrugged. "Can't hurt." He shrugged again. "I guess it's—I don't know." I glanced at him. He was looking at the mausoleum, the sun behind him backlighting his profile and turning his hair into a halo. 

"You ever get anything out of it?" I asked.

"She's helped me find peace," he answered, not looking at me.

My fingers grazed his palm when I took the sugar packet, sending shocks of static electricity through me. "Now close your eyes," Emmanuel said, his voice smooth and quiet. A child laughed nearby and a mother shushed her. "Ask your questions," Emmanuel said.

I saw Megan's face, when she was well, the look she'd give me across a crowded room to let me know that I was special—that really, out of everyone there, all those people fawning over her, I was her special person. I squeezed the sugar packet between my fingers so that I felt the individual grains. A burning desire roared in my gut to see her again, to see her eyes flash at me, a shared secret, a shared past. I wanted Megan back.

I felt a tear fall down my cheek and opened my eyes, blinking the drops away. Before I could bring my hand up to wipe away the tears Emmanuel said, "Wait." He took the sugar packet from me and then slowly reached out, catching the tear as it fell off my chin. He moved the packet up and dabbed at my eyes, the paper wet against my skin. I closed my eyes and felt his breath against my cheek. "She'll like that," he said, handing me back the sugar packet.

"She likes tears?" I asked.

"Anything authentic," he answered. "Go ahead, put it on the crypt."

I opened my eyes and, reaching onto my tiptoes, placed the packet between a bottle of rum and a piece of chewing gum on the roof's edge. Maybe asking Suki would do me more good then asking God ever had. I knew this burning desire, this deep need to see someone again. After my father died I spent every moment in my foster father's church, begging for his return; I wanted it and believed that God would deliver it with every ounce of my young being. Everyone told me to pray and I did. Now I knew that didn't work, but I couldn't help but burn for Megan to come back. She had helped me quench that first fire. How could I do it again?

I thought about him then, my father. We'd lived together in a wooden house deep in an evergreen forest. The trees grew so thick that even on sunny days it was dark. Our closest neighbors were a day's hike away.

He always took me hunting with him. It was just the two of us, and I don't remember him ever leaving me alone. By the time I was eight I could kill with a bow. We were hunting when he died. It was a pack of wolves. They had green eyes, frothing mouths, and bloody wounds. Father put me on our mare, Honey, and slapped her rump. When I looked back over my shoulder I saw a wolf leap, latch onto his shoulder, and drag him to the ground.

I screamed, which only made Honey run faster. But then she slid to a stop and I flopped over her neck, my balance off, my mind a mess. Honey reeled up and I fell back, landing in the snow, my hood flopping over my eyes. I scrambled to my feet and saw a wolf right in front of me. Its hackles were raised, part of its muzzle looked like it had been gnawed off. The being's eyes were phosphorescent green.

Honey stood still, her muscles shaking with fear, eyes white. I'd never seen her like that before, frozen in place; it wasn't what a horse should do. The flight instinct should have taken over.

Looking back the way we'd come, I saw Honey's hoof prints in the deep snow. It was up to my knees. The wolf started forward, its mangled nose pulsing at the air. I went to pull my bow around to the front of my body. But it was upon me in a moment. I held my bow up, the creature's jaws snapping inches from my face. Blood and saliva spat out of the wolf's mouth, landing cold and wet on my cheeks.

My biceps shook, the teeth getting closer. They were yellow and cracked. Part of the wolf's tongue was torn off, and it revolted me. My arms gave out and the wolf fell upon my shoulder, the broken teeth ripping through my coat and digging into my flesh. I screamed as much from fear as pain.

An arrow pierced its eye and the thing collapsed, all of its weight lying on top of me. I struggled out from under the body, crying and hyperventilating as I got myself free. My father stood twenty feet away, swaying. His left arm was hanging loose in its socket. His forearm and hand looked like tattered clothing. Blood dripped off them, staining the white snow.