and Falling, Fly Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1 - WHAT YOU SEE

  Chapter 2 - WHAT YOU HUNT

  Chapter 3 - SAUCE TO MEAT

  Chapter 4 - INTO THE FIRE

  Chapter 5 - THE FIRST THING WHICH GOD’S EYE NAMED

  Chapter 6 - I DON’T WANT TO SEE

  Chapter 7 - OVERTAKEN

  Chapter 8 - OVERTHROWN

  Chapter 9 - IN DARK

  Chapter 10 - DEATH

  Chapter 11 - THE FACE OF THE VOID

  Chapter 12 - VERTIGO

  Chapter 13 - LEGEND

  SOMETIMES THE HUNT IS ALL THERE IS…

  She’s alone. I see her now, walking briskly north. She, too, has learned not to run. I shorten the space between us too soon, pressing down need and anger. Shall I let her hear me? No.

  She turns, sensing the darkness moving… Her tender heart rate is rising. Now she knows it’s me. She struggles not to run, looking hard over her shoulder. Does she hope for a different ending? How could she believe that? How could she try so valiantly if she does not?

  Disciplining my strength into grace, I shadow her… I’m almost touching her, breathing the slippery smell of her fear. But the thrumming beat of her, visible through the warm flesh of her throat, summons me. My pulseless fingers reach out for the hammering vein and feel it pound swifter against them. She makes a strange noise and runs.

  I watch as long as I can, her strong body straining forward, before I slide in behind her. Magnificent, striding flight, her legs stretch and mine shadow. I rein myself back as her endurance fails. Her blazing lungs and her tearing heart echo through me. I could so easily overtake her, drive my teeth into her now, but she will exhaust herself soon and have to stop. And then…

  Then I will take her…

  and Falling, Fly

  Skyler White

  A BERKLEY BOOK

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This book is an original publication of the Berkley Publishing Group.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 2010 by Skyler White

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  BERKLEY is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  The “B” design is a trademark belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  White, Skyler.

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-18569-8

  1. Neuroscientists—Fiction. 2. Vampires—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3623.H57888A53 2010

  813’.6—dc22 2009036368

  http://us.penguingroup.com/

  To Scott and Molly,

  who put my feet on this path

  and pushed

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you to my parents for the education, and for their infinite patience and inexhaustible faith. Thank you to my children for their enthusiasm, cheerleading, daydreaming, and forgiveness; and to my sister for keeping me honest. Thank you to my editor, Leis Pederson, for making it better than it was; to my agent, Holly Root, for believing in what it could be; and to my cover artist, Craig White, for seeing Olivia more clearly than I did. Thank you to David Bradford for his unerring critical eye; to Molly for her graphic design genius and generosity; to ARWA for the education and encouragement, the challenge and acceptance; to Scott for editing and managing and consoling and babysitting; and to my crit group—ladies, you’re the pitts! Thank you to Deborah Morrison for being a mentor in writing, parenting, and adulthood; to Steve Dutton for riding to the rescue more than once; and to Jill White (and Scott again) for that seminal Irish trip. Thank you to Linda Ingmanson for saying no, and Chris Keeslar for saying yes. Thank you to Alison Greco for what she knows about psychiatry; to Sunil Sebastian for what he knows about physics; to Beth Henson for what she knows about medicine; and to Michael DiLeo for what he knows about writing and for the coffee.

  Thank you to the mythic damned, my friends of contradictions, with wings of stone and hearts on fire, for the inspiration and the company.

  My darling ones, Reborn and Undead, Damned, Cursed, and Misbegotten—Hell calls her absent children home.

  De profundis,

  G.

  The apparently unendurable conflict is proof of the rightness of your life. A life without inner contradiction is either only half a life, or else is a life in the Beyond, which is destined only for angels. But God loves human beings more than angels.

  —C. JUNG, LETTERS, VOLUME I, P. 375

  1

  WHAT YOU SEE

  The angel of desire is damned. At least that’s what my tattoo says. Okay, if I’m honest, it just says dam, with ned still only outlined in purple stencil. But twenty-first-century angel that I am, I don’t give a fig for honesty. I want speed. If Ed doesn’t hurry, no lie I can invent will explain what he’ll start to see.

  He begins the N and glances up from the black halo of letters whose half-circle crowns my pubic mound. “So, Olivia, you wanna tell me the story?”

  Tattooists are the new priests for the fucked-up and the thrown away. They speak the language of symbol, and administer penance in tiny metallic lashes. They hear confession; and Ed wants mine. Or he thinks he does. And for a minute, amidst the jumbled iconography of Celtic and tribal patterns, the pick-your-own pantheon of Saints Teresa and Betty Boop, I want to tell this handsome nouveau-cleric, bent in genuflection over my crotch, everything I am.

  “It’s my birthday,” I say instead.

  “Yeah? Happy birthday.” He bows back over the N, the electric drill buzz of his pen my only indication that the needle has started again. “You just break up with some guy?”

  “No, but give it a couple of hours.”

  He laughs, but it’s my birthday, and my boyfriend has something special and secretive planned—a dark omen. Men can never resist giving me what they want for my birthday, and so I’ve slept alone that night every year since at least the shift from the Julian calendar. Probably longer.

  “Wanna tell me about it?”

  “It’s not a story you want to he
ar,” I tell him.

  “You can’t surprise me, girl. I’ve seen it all.” Crouched like a cobbler, Ed hovers inches above my low-rider briefs. I like the way this new style of underwear exposes the unblemished white of my belly for him. I like that it conceals what would freak out even this New York City pierce-and-brand-style veteran of the skin artist’s trade.

  “My body misrepresents me,” I say.

  The whir of the needle stops as Ed’s dark eyes take a slow tour. “I don’t see how.”

  No, how could he? He smells of clove cigarettes and filth, and against the fabric of my unbuttoned jeans, my hips begin to swell. So Eddie likes his girls a little plump, eh? With a nervous clearing of his skinny throat, he returns to his work, but it’s too late. Already, my tits are filling, pushing against the fine lace of my bra, growing under my T-shirt. My hair darkens a fraction. Ed won’t notice I’ve changed. He’ll just wonder why he didn’t realize before how gorgeous this rockabilly birthday girl is. I shove my hair back from my face, inventorying the way it now falls in Bettie Page bangs. It’s okay, unless it slows him down. I can’t risk that.

  “Four down, two to go.” He grins up at me. “You doing okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  His conscientious, gloved fingers avoid the white cotton framed by my jeans zipper and belt, but he rests his wrist against the inside of my now-plump thigh. His sunken eyes glance up over the heightened rise of my breasts, and his habitual dabs wipe blood that no longer wells from the finished D. If he notices, he will worry. “Do the last two letters,” I whisper, injecting sexy into my voice to hurry him.

  I can’t hate him. He is too young and can’t help the way his dominatrix fetish molds my breasts into Wonder Woman cones. I can hate them, though. Just once, on my birthday, I would like to keep my native form. Ed works steadily on my E, humming along to the music grinding from the tattoo parlor’s massive speakers. The word parlor, with its vague overtones of powdery old ladies and prostitutes, comforts me somehow. I’m grateful for it. Tonight is likely to go badly. I’m meeting my boyfriend of seven months for dinner, and trying not to hope.

  To him, I am beautiful and pure, saving myself for marriage and motherhood. He sees me as a virginal holdover from a more romantic age. He has spent entire nights simply kissing me. But he’s genuine twenty-first-century and only faking patience. Tonight he is likely to dispose of pretense and ruin everything with a nineteenth-century idea. I catch myself twisting the hair-fine chain around my wrist, grating the brass key against the lock it can’t reach. I still my restless fingers and swallow a growl.

  “I think you’ve got a killer body.” Ed has finished the E.

  I give him a slow, midnight smile. “You’re about half right,” I tell him.

  His needle stops again. “You’re sick, aren’t you? You’ve got cancer or something, you know, down there?” It’s cute, the way compassion wars with disappointment on the poorly mown field of his face.

  “No. I’m perfectly healthy,” I tell him. “In fact, I don’t think I’ll ever die.”

  It’s the most truthful thing to pass my hellfire-red lips in years. “I’m just…”

  “Screwed?”

  I laugh. “Not ever.” My, what an honesty streak I’m on.

  “I could, you know”—Eddie shrugs—“help you out with that if you want?”

  “I’m sure you could.” Better. Back to lying. “Don’t stop.”

  “I didn’t.” But now he has. The electric needle hangs above the fork of my legs, immobile. His confusion peers across my newly fleshy belly, over the twin tit pyramids. I have screwed up again. I force a giggle.

  “Are you high?” Ed touches the machine to me without breaking his gaze. I wince. He grins. “You’re high, aren’t you?”

  The needle jabs again. Again I pretend it hurts me, and Ed’s black, Brylcreemed head bows over my pubis once more. He shares that with the ancient priests, at least—the pleasure he takes in my pain.

  “You never told me why you wanted the tat.” Ed’s long, artist’s fingers rub ointment into my belly, oblivious to the lack of inflammation around his freshly drawn lines. “Damned,” he reads aloud. His fingers dip below the elastic of my panties, spreading the slick protective gel to unmarked skin. “What did you say, your body betrayed you?”

  “Something like that.”

  “What, it go cheat on your boyfriend without you?” He winks, carefully taping gauze over his work. His fingers are smooth as his lines, but I don’t answer him.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Adam.”

  “He’s a lucky guy.”

  If Ed takes any longer taping my bandage, or running my credit card, or explaining my wound care instruction sheet, I run a very real risk of tearing his face off.

  “And you’ve got some good antibacterial soap at home?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve got my phone number there. I put it on the sheet, so if you have any trouble—any questions—you call me, okay?”

  I leave him at the cash register and walk, with as much poise as an impatient immortal can wrangle, to the electric blue bathroom, where I yank up my shirt and peel down the right corner of Ed’s meticulous bandage.

  The letters are already fading. I sit on the toilet lid and stare at the dirty floor.

  I get the same tattoo every February fourteenth. It’s my little birthday joke on myself, but today it just isn’t funny. Not with the dread of what Adam will do. Not with my breasts inflated to a size they haven’t been since the days when my brother Jack walked the London streets. In those days, a lady could stretch a courtship over a year, and be thanked for the privilege. A few months of kissing Adam, and the darling expects me to say yes tonight. Ten minutes of kissing Ed, and the ass would expect a different acquiescence. All I want is a tattoo—a bad girl brand on my perfect body to mark me with what I truly am. I check it again. The first D is gone.

  “Eddie,” I call out the bathroom door, “can you come back here a second?”

  I put my alabaster hands on the stained basin of the sink and stare into the mirror above it. I wait for Ed’s reflection to show me my face in the silvered glass. He slouches in. I scowl at the pinup parody of myself and slip behind him to lock the door. I lean against the flimsy wood.

  “Does it hurt?” he asks.

  “Yes,” I lie. My perfect body can’t feel pleasure or pain, can’t transmit any sensation more acute than simple pressure. But my other senses are keen, and his masculine smell rises over the clove.

  His hands take my waist—do they tremble just a little, tough guy? A choked prayer of desire escapes his tight throat, and I put my scarlet lips against his. I let him kiss me, lipstick messy between us for elongating seconds, before I bite into his mouth.

  I don’t mean to do it, but the subtle razor surfaces of my teeth and tongue erupt, grazing the insides of his mouth, making cuts too small for him to feel. It doesn’t take much to feed me, microscopic globules of blood from the tiny surface cuts my quilled teeth make in his lips and against his gums. I suck on his mouth and he shudders against me. He’s hungry, too.

  In his blood I taste only tedious, arcane desires, but am tempted by the whisper of the dreams that feeding full-tooth would bring. Still, I don’t strike. It’s not his fault. He worked diligently to give me what I asked for—a word for my flesh, a name for my body. But if his inky blood is all I can get of what I want, I’ll swallow what I can.

  He grapples at the zipper of my jeans, and I recoil from the danger of his callused fingers finding my tattoo gone. He mutters something about hurting me and slides his innocent hands over my body, away from the bandage, to tug on my shirt. I pull it over my head for him. I will give him anything he wants with my sandcastle tits—I can’t feel them—just let me keep feasting on his stained and smoky mouth.

  His delicate hands run up my back, the only ugly part of my body, and close over my breasts, grinding roughly, but my tongue laps at his gaping mouth. He would tak
e me right here, if I let him, hard against the too-blue door. Sex is naked in the twenty-first century, naked as Ed’s need, and it fucks its angels fast and hungry in the nasty bathrooms where kids who find they can’t take the needle come to puke their humiliated guts out. If I could, I would let him, because yes is easier than no these days, and I’m not a cock-tease or a good girl. But I cannot, because of what I really am.

  “Damned…” Ed’s fingertips graze the dressing again.

  I remember to pretend it hurts me, and his cock throbs against my fat thigh. All the letters are gone, but desire still whimpers to him, and he brings his mouth down hard over mine again. I press his thin hand against the bandage. Why have I never thought of this before? Pain is easier to fake than pleasure. Could this—finally—be the loophole? Could it be suffering that frees me, instead of love?

  “Look at you,” he whistles.

  “Behold, the damned!” I make a comic little flourish and shimmy my tits.

  He groans. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”

  “Yeah, and I need you to, okay?”

  “You’re kind of messed up, you know?”

  Ed, Eddie, Pontius Edward—he will ask the questions, he will drive the tiny, electric nails into my flesh, but all the time, he’s washing his hands. He doesn’t want to know, doesn’t want to be involved. He’s curious, not concerned; a voyeur, not an actor; and I scent fear beneath the cloves.

  He can’t save me, the fucker. If I kiss him again, I will taste his hesitation. I lick my lips for lingering flecks, and he pushes his hair back with fingers that say hate across the knuckles. I smile into his innocent eyes and pull on my shirt. “You’re blocking the door,” I tell him.