Heat Stroke

“Just—stop.” Patrick swallowed hard, fists clenched. “Not in my house. I’ll not allow this.”

“But you’d allow this.” Yvette pulled a frosted glass bottle from a purse she’d dropped in the corner. Rattled it suggestively. Popped the rubber cap on the top.

A Dji

I remembered something David had said. They had appetites in common. Well, I knew Bad Bob Biringanine’s appetites well enough to be sickened by that.

Patrick went sickly pale and protested, “Don’t—” but it was too late.

The black shadow of the Ifrit slid around the kitchen door, flowed over carpet.

“I see she’s hungry,” Yvette said, and moved out of the way. “Want to lecture me about morality now, Patrick?”

He hung his head.

The Ifrit leaped like a hunting cat. Ripped into the Dji

She sucked him in through that black gaping maw of a mouth and swallowed him whole. Nothing left. Not even a scream. I was frozen by Yvette’s command, but I wouldn’t have had the courage to run even if I were free. There was something so predatory, so cold in the air…

The Ifrit turned her non-face toward me, sniffing, and I went utterly cold. To stand here and be devoured without a fight was the worst fate I could imagine.

But then she changed. Frosted black skin going pale, smooth, glorious. A glowing waterfall of white hair. Her eyes were the last thing to change, flickering from dead black to a deep dark amethyst.

Sara, as I’d seen her in the dream. She stretched out her arms mutely to Patrick, and collapsed. He rushed to her, picked her up and cradled her in his embrace, lips pressed to the soft waves of her hair.

He was whispering something to her, over and over. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. When he looked up at me, the misery in his eyes hit like a blow. “It’s the only way,” he said. “She has to eat…”

And she ate other Dji

Yvette’s cool green eyes were all over me like sticky hands. She’d forgotten all about Lewis, unconscious on the floor. “You’re like Patrick, then. Human, changed by a Dji

I don’t think I’d ever been so ashamed of my origins. I gave her a burning glare back. “So what does Patrick do for you, to get your castoffs? Besides pimp out whoever he can get his hands on?”

She had the sweetest, most revolting smile. “Why, I don’t think the business details of our arrangement are going to be your concern, pretty girl. No, I think you’d just better concentrate on making my son Kevin very happy.”

Yvette tossed the kid the bottle. He almost fumbled it. I had that one second to move while the bottle was out of her control and passing into his; I used it to race to Lewis’s side and pour what healing energy I had into him.

He was hurt. Badly. I couldn’t do enough, wasn’t good enough.

“What are you doing?” Patrick protested, clearly thrown—not talking to me, but to Yvette.

She rounded on him with clenched fists. “Getting rid of the trash. You think I wanted her? You told me you had a way to get to David.”

“I do!” He nodded at me. “He’ll come for her. As soon as he knows you have her, he’ll come ru

“He’d better,” she said, and gave him a full smile, with teeth. “If he doesn’t, there’s no place you can hide from me. You know that.” She shot a look at me, and I was struck by the sheer callous indifference in her eyes. “Put your toy away, Kevin. I want to go home.”

The kid clutching the bottle pointed at me and said, “You. In the bottle. Now.”

I had no choice, none at all. I felt myself breaking apart, looked up to see Yvette watching me with dreaming sea green eyes. “Don’t you worry, sweetie,” she said as I was sucked away into gray oblivion. “I’m sure we’ll think of something interesting to do with you.”

You wouldn’t think you could dream in oblivion, but well, there you go. I dreamed I was a child again. Very small, too small to understand the world around me—a toddler, teetering around on stubby uncertain legs and grabbing for anything pretty, shiny, interesting, dangerous.

I dreamed of being held in someone’s arms, maybe my mother’s, with my head pillowed on her shoulder. I remembered rain, falling like perfect diamonds from the soft gray sky. I remembered wind licking cool over my skin. I remembered thunder vibrating through me like the voice of God.

Dreams and memories are so very close to the same thing.

In the dream, in the memory, I fell down on the cool, damp grass and wailed in fright, and there was somebody there, gathering me up, holding me, stroking away the pain and fear and tears.

Shhhh. It was my mother’s voice, warm and blurred the way things are in dreams. They’ll hear you.

I was too young to talk, but somehow I was talking anyway. Who?

Her hands smoothed my hair in gentle, careful strokes. You know.

I did. I cuddled in closer to her warmth. Overhead, the clouds muttered to each other in a language I could almost understand, and I reached out to them and felt them draw closer, all soft edges and cold alien intensity.

They wanted me. I wanted them. In my simple child logic, I thought that meant there was no danger; anything that was interested in me had to be my friend, didn’t it?

I didn’t understand that interest could also be hunger. That there were parts of me that were tender and juicy and oh so delicious, and that the world was full of predators who wanted to scoop out those tasty tidbits. No, I didn’t understand that.

But my mother did. Be careful, she whispered in my ear. Something’s coming. You need to be ready, sweetheart. You need to understand how to see behind the smiles.

What’s behind the smiles? I asked her, in my little-child voice. She showed me teeth. Long, sharp, needle-thin teeth, the better to eat you with, my dear.

Don’t trust anyone, she hissed. And then she let go, and I fell up into the clouds, and felt myself being stripped raw, pulled apart, burned, broken, destroyed.

See, it was just a dream. Or a memory. Or a nightmare.

Except the parts that actually happened.

Two

The next thing I knew was a rush of cool, sweet air. I convulsively wanted to breathe but I had no lungs, and no body to hold them. Still, part of me knew what to do. I followed the breeze up, out, into the light.

I came out of the perfume vial, which lay on its side on a Chee·tos-dusted coffee table, right next to a much-creased and sticky edition of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. I ghosted up slowly. It felt like I was drugged stupid, unable to will myself to do anything but wait, drifting, for meaning.

Shit. This was so not working out for the best.

“Uhhhh—”

An uncertain human voice. Soft and hesitant as it was, it still echoed through me like a church bell. Something in me went completely still, waiting. I was focused like a predator waiting to pounce.

This felt nothing at all like what had happened between me and Lewis. Nothing at all. It was perfectly horrible.