Heat Stroke

“Anybody there?” the voice asked. He sounded scared shitless. Good. Welcome to the club, jerk.

“Yes,” I said—not that I meant to say anything, I just was compelled to respond. My voice sounded odd, because it was coming from the very thin air I was at the moment. I filed that away for later investigation, when and if I got be scientific about such things. “I’m here.”

Oh, God, it was the little bastard who’d beaten Lewis. Lewis… God, I’d left him there. How much would he remember? Was he even still alive? Patrick, you bastard. I’d make damn sure somebody paid for this.

Seen close, Psycho Boy didn’t look nearly as threatening: a gawky, acne-pocked teenager, all long legs and stick-thin arms, wearing a Metallica T-shirt that had seen too many mosh pits. This pimply kid— she’d called him Kevin, oh God, was I supposed to call him Master? — sat on the edge of an unmade bed and tried to look everywhere at once, eyes darting like crazy but paying particular attention to the corners of the room. He had a lot to look at, and none of it was pretty. The place was like a Dumpster right before pickup day, piled with trash, discarded pizza boxes, old cartons smeared with dried Chinese food. A pile of filthy underwear moldered near the bed. A pinup of a collagen-enhanced, silicone-implanted beauty in a metal bra and thong was pi

Oh, I could already tell this was not going to be pretty. Lewis. God, what happened to Lewis?

Kevin shifted nervously on the bed, which creaked like old joints. “Um… I command you to appear!” He tried to sound like some medieval wizard, but he came off like a self-conscious bad actor, and blotched bright red over his cheeks and forehead.

And even so, I responded instantly. My body built itself far quicker and better than it had before, all layers simultaneously, and I felt a certain weird cockeyed pride in that, until I looked down at myself.

Oh God.

You already know, right? Of course you do. High-heeled pumps of the come-fuck-me variety. Thigh-high hose fastened with garters. Lacy thong panties under a tiny little black frilly skirt with a white apron. Black corset top, and believe me, I was now filling it. Generously.

I shuddered, looked up and found my reflection staring back at me in the mirror.

Pale skin, fire engine red pouty lips, eyes of an unsettlingly bright shade of silver. I looked like the porn version of Magenta from Rocky Horror.

Kevin looked shocked. Genuinely shocked. Not as much as I felt, though. When I found David again, I was going to ask some very tough questions about the rules of this particular nasty game.

“Mom!” Kevin yelled, and then went pallid as he instantly thought better of that course of action. He dashed to the closed door of the room—decorated with more soft-porn posters—and clicked over two deadbolt locks in fast succession to lock her out. “Uh, never mind, sorry, mistake!”

He turned to face me, back firmly against the door, and I stared at him. Couldn’t say anything, really. Couldn’t do anything except seethe and wonder what in the hell was happening. She said she wanted David. David had been afraid of that, back at the funeral, I’d sensed it all over him.

Now she had me. Could I warn him away?

I reached for that warm silvery umbilical that stretched into the aetheric, and was relieved to find it still intact. David was still alive, at least, wherever he was and whatever Jonathan had him doing. I tried to send a whisper along the line, but it hit something, some kind of barrier, and died.

When I blinked, I saw a blue coldlight sparkle whirling around me. Oh God. It was not only still there, it was getting worse.

“Who are you?” Kevin asked me, drawing me back to the world. I didn’t feel any compulsion to answer, so I didn’t. I just stared at him. The silver eyes had to be u

No, I didn’t. This kid clearly didn’t have the rule book memorized, because he’d forgotten all about the Rule of Three, which even I had known before meeting my first Dji

We are consummate, conscienceless liars. And from the pure cold fury boiling inside of me, I was starting to think we had an extra helping of psychopath to go along with it.

The cold stare was getting to him, all right. I could see it in the nervous tic developing around his left eye, and the quick movements of his hands as he tried to figure out the best way to lounge and look cool under pressure. He finally settled for slouching with his hands in his pockets and going for a half-lidded, defiant stare back at me.

“Nice outfit,” he said. I didn’t smile. The little bastard had done this to me, whether he knew it or not; I had a new appreciation for how little I’d changed when Lewis had claimed me. Obviously, what Lewis wanted and what he saw in me were almost the same things—in retrospect, one hell of a compliment. Kevin wanted a living blow-up doll, apparently. The implications of that were not especially comforting.

He looked pouty when I didn’t respond. “Fine, be that way, I don’t give a crap.”

He did, of course. It only took about another thirty seconds to wait him out. I felt like a participant in Short Attention Span Theater.

“Well?” he snapped, and pushed away from the door. Not much, just a couple of inches, but I still didn’t like it. Better if I could keep him cowed and thoroughly u

“What would you like me to do?” I asked. I meant it to be sarcastic, but it came out in a sultry, smoky, seductive purr. Gee, wonderful. I had the 1-900 voice to go with the yard sale Frederick’s of Hollywood outfit.

Well, one good thing about the voice, it derailed him completely. He was too hornily captivated to realize that he actually could order me to do things. So far.

This was going to take some real juggling skill. Best thing to do was to take the initiative, and since I didn’t feel anything stopping me, I took a step toward him. I made sure my new stance had that Xena Warrior Princess bad-ass cachet to it.

“What’s your name?” I asked him. He backed up again, lips parted, brown eyes wide and riveted behind the glasses.

“Kevin—Kevin. Kevin Prentiss.” He cleared his throat and tried to make it go deeper than its current punk-kid range. “What’s yours?”

“What do you want it to be?” Because I wasn’t going to have this horny little bastard calling me by my real name. And the twenty questions was a way to waste time.

“Um… Honey?”

I lost my sense of humor. “You’re kidding.”

“No.”

“Really.”

He hadn’t expected resistance. “Um, no?”

“Okay, let me put it this way: You’d better be kidding.”

He blinked. “You’re arguing with me?”

“Of course not,” I purred. I really did. I wasn’t trying to purr, it was just the way things were going today. Apparently, my new voice had a built-in seduction filter. “Why would I argue with you?” Always answer a question with a question.

“I don’t know, but you shouldn’t be arguing with me, you should be—”

“What?” I interrupted, and crossed my arms. It was, not coincidentally, in the classic I Dream of Jea