Kiss the Stars (Devon Slaughter Book 1) (15 page)

I WALKED down
Ruby’s street. I wore earbuds.
Social Distortion
fed me like an I.V. “Well,
it’s been ten years and a thousand tears and look at the mess I’m in,” Mike
Ness sang. I’d met him, once, at a party Zadie took me to in L.A. Those were
the days, I thought, before I knew how close we were to the end.

My memories (the
ones I’d pined for) were too bright, like an old black and white film painted
with color. In real life, the moon was jagged, the sidewalks cracked. Skinny
street lamps cast pools of limp light. When I leaped over the fence into Ruby’s
yard, I saw nothing but weeds and dead flowers.

Her front door
hadn’t closed far enough to latch. I was surprised by the darkness inside. I’d
expected the usual flicker of candlelight, a warming fire. When I found Ruby on
the floor, I rushed to her. She was near the sofa, curled on her side with her
knees drawn up. Her pulse leaped into my veins.

I stuffed the
iPod in my pocket and put my hand on her head. I saw her eyelashes flutter. I
stroked her hair and tasted her pain, like honey to my soul.

“Ruby, can you
hear me?”

“Yes.”

“Why are you on
the floor?”

“It hurts so
much.”

“What hurts?” her
hair was soft under my hand.

“I hurt.”

I lifted her up
easily. She weighed nothing, but she was listless, like a rag doll. “Hold on to
me tighter,” I said. We went up the stairs, and down the hallway, past the
paintings of her mother, India Glaw, the ‘murderess’.

She kicked. “Stop,”
she said. “I want to go to my room…”

I ignored her.
As we began to ascend the attic stairway, she twisted harder in my arms. “No,
Devon. Why?”

Maybe I liked
the mosquito net that reminded me of Ometepe. Or maybe the attic was symbolic,
the place where I’d cut myself for her and exposed my monstrous soul.

You know what
I am. Don’t fight it.

I laid her on
the bed and kicked off my boots and stripped. I got beside her. I slipped my
hands under her dress. Her skin was cold.

I ripped off her
clothes and cast them on the floor. I turned her over, so she was on her
stomach.

Her sadness
filled me with unreal strength. I had never felt more alive.

She grabbed the
bed frame, lost hold, and then we were sideways, sliding on the sheets. When
she started to fall off the edge of the mattress, I pulled her back and turned
her over again.

I held down her
wrists and looked into her eyes.

She moaned, and
cried, (not cried
out
, but really cried). Mascara made black tracks down
her face. I paused, mid-thrust. Nothing like this had ever happened before. Me,
naked, a woman crying. I thought I was hurting her. I’d just deflowered her,
and now I was ravaging her.

I let go of her
wrists, but her arms came around my neck. “More,” she said.

HIS LIPS brushed
my belly, my thigh. I felt his tongue, warm and probing. I was chafed and it
matched how I felt inside—scraped out and raw.

When his mouth
enclosed my nipple, I writhed. I didn’t want him to ever stop.

He drew back,
and entered me, again, but he moved slowly.

I raised my hips
to urge him on, faster. He went slower, as if to torture me. His eyes were half
closed. His lips were near mine, not touching. I wanted to kiss him. I wanted
to bleed.

He turned his
head and buried his face in the crook of my neck. I dug my nails into his back.
He thrust into me, faster and faster, until, at last, he came too. He bit me,
hard, and something inside me broke free.

He laced his
fingers through mine. And then we were kissing…

I DIDN’T mean to
kiss her. Our lips touched, our mouths opened, and the world dropped out from
under me.

We made out,
like hungry teenagers.

There was a
sound in my head, like the popping of a champagne cork. I saw tears and blood, a
gash in my flesh, a wound closing…stars like diamonds.

I lost track of
time and space, until I was falling, tumbling down, in the wrong direction,
through endless darkness.

No, I wasn’t
falling at all. I was being pulled up from the depths of a cold dark lake. Up
and up…

I broke through
the surface, like crashing through glass.

My heart thumped
and surged. I shuddered. I gulped air and opened my eyes.

There were the
stars again. They sparkled, like fairy dust. A terrible sadness engulfed me.

I had been up
there, soaring toward comets that streaked across the sky. But they weren’t
comets at all; they were winged creatures brimming with light. They were coming
for me, until something strong and undeniable took me away, and brought me back
to earth.

She was a
creature from the lake. Her wet hair dripped onto my skin. My eyes closed, as
she pressed her mouth to mine. Her breath was inside me.

When I opened my
eyes again, she was gone.

She wasn’t an
angel who had saved me and brought me back to life. She had made me
un
dead.

Zadie
.

Zadie had done
this to me.

* * *

I touched Ruby’s
neck where I’d bitten her. A bruise was forming. “Did you kiss me?”

“You kissed me,”
she said. She lay back down, snuggling next to me, but I sat up. I kept seeing
Zadie, like a ghost, with energy crackling around her. I was hyper-alert, on
edge.

I glanced down
at Ruby. “Are you okay?”

“Should I be?”
she smiled. Color blushed on her cheeks.

I thought of the
speed of the Ferrari on the open road. I’d returned the car, parking it where I’d
found it, in the garage, next to a black Jaguar. How easy it was to take and
why couldn’t I do it again? Or why not hop on a Lear jet? I could get away with
anything.

But there was
nowhere to go. Not until I found Zadie.

“You sure you’re
fine?” I said to Ruby. You never knew what could happen over something as
simple as a kiss anymore. Her kiss had lifted me up into the stars and Zadie’s
kiss had brought me back from the dead.

It was only just
now occurring to me I was probably breaking a lot of paranormal rules;
transgressions which could lead to unimaginable horrors, or cruel and unusual
punishment meted out by the supernatural powers that be.

Ruby sat up,
keeping the covers drawn around her. She frowned, half scowled. “Well, I don’t
know if
fine
…is the word I’d use. Where are you going?”

I grabbed my
clothes off the floor.

I didn’t like
wearing unwashed clothes, especially unwashed underwear. So I thought the first
thing I’d do was shower at the spa. And then I’d put on clean clothes from my
locker, laundered for me on site. Come to think of it, why did I have to wear
clothes?

Why did I have a
human form that looked exactly like the one I’d had before? What was to prevent
me from running into an old friend who thought I was dead? The ‘supernatural
powers that be’ were stupid.

“Devon…I’m
talking to you…hello?”

I jerked my gaze
to Ruby. “What did you say?”

“Where are you
going?”

“Nowhere. I have
some business to take care of.”

“So late?
Nothing will be open.”

“You read my
obituary. Is it too much of a leap to think I might have nocturnal business?”
As soon as the words left my mouth, I hoped she wouldn’t cry again, but it was
a futile worry.

Her eyes
narrowed into a hard glare. “Are you going to the
bar
?” Despite her
angry tone, I felt the slightest bit sorry for her. She reminded me of a kid in
the school yard, trying to stand up to a bully.

I went to her. “Didn’t
you have a good time?”

“Why won’t you
stay?” she rose up on her knees and grabbed my arm. The blanket slid down,
exposing her. “You’d do it with anyone, wouldn’t you? Just screw out their
brains.”

I laughed.

“It’s not funny,”
she said.

“It’s kind of
funny to hear you say screw
out
their brains instead of screw their
brains out.”

“I don’t see the
difference,” her shoulders slumped. She sank down on the bed. “No one is
special. You probably don’t even know their names.”

“I know your
name.”

“What about
Scarlet?” her eyes glittered at me.

“Who?”

“The girl,
Devon. Seventeen? God. How could you? She thinks you’re her perfect fantasy but
you don’t even know her name.”

“Well, I
also
have no idea what you’re talking about. It didn’t happen.”

But I couldn’t
be sure. I didn’t go around checking I.D.

IT FELT so
strange when he left, like waking from a dream. I was always confused and
disoriented by his sudden absences. I’d think a lot of time had passed when
barely minutes had gone by. When I wasn’t with him, the world barely turned.

I checked my
watch. 10:33.

I touched the
place on my neck where he had bitten me, and shivered.

I gathered my
clothes off the floor.

My dress was
ripped down the middle. Shame burned inside me. He was already gone, eager to
get away, probably on to the next woman, while I was left alone to put myself
back together.

I went down the
dank stairway, naked, holding the shards of my clothes that felt like the last
remnants of my dignity. In my room, rain lashed at the windows. When I parted
the curtains, I saw treetops swaying in the wind. The sight made me dizzy.

I wrapped my
arms around myself.

I couldn’t decide
what to do. I wanted to bathe and put on a nightgown and go to bed. I wanted to
sleep for a long time, until the storm was over. And yet, I felt an urgency to
escape the house, and myself.

I stood inside
my closet, gazing at the mess. Recent events had slipped and fallen into
disarray, like the clothes in my closet. Trying to reshelf them into
chronological order seemed impossible and the more I tried, the more spiders
spun cobwebs in my brain.

I gulped air.

At last, I chose
a simple black skirt and a black V-neck sweater.

As I dressed, I
couldn’t stop the images of Scarlet and Devon together, entwined. Anger mounted
inside me. Anger at everyone—Georgie, Henry, Scarlet and most of all, Devon.

My fingers
twitched, my skin crawled.

I tried to get a
comb through my gnarled hair but my scalp was too tender. When I attempted to
put on lipstick, my hand shook. I couldn’t stay within my lip line. I stared at
my clownish reflection. I rubbed my mouth with a tissue.

I put on black
boots over fishnet stockings and grabbed a black raincoat from a hook by the
door. I paused, my hand on the doorknob.

Just go
.

No, roll the
dice first. It’s bad luck if you don’t. The worst will happen.

Just go. Stop
being psycho.

A gust of wind
shook the house.

I turned around.

As I went up the
stairs, I gripped the banister. The wood was smooth, worn down by years.

The house was
almost a hundred and thirty years old, built by a cattle baron when the west
was full of outlaws. My mother liked to pretend spirits lived here but I
thought it was just her inner demons that made things go bump in the night.

Once, she woke
me in the early hours of dawn. I’d fallen asleep on the sofa and her
fingernails dug into the flesh on my arms. Her hair hung limp. She wore an old
checkered Armani jacket over her nightgown.

I struggled to
sit up. When I looked at her feet, I saw she had on shoes with spiky heels. “You’re
not going out?” I said.

“I can’t,” she
said. “The spirits have locked us in.”

Later, I found
her in bed, passed out on top of the covers. What if my mother knew things?
What if she wasn’t crazy but saw what normal so-called sane people couldn’t?

I swayed and
held the railing tighter. I kept going, one stair at a time, until I reached
the top.

My thoughts
veered wildly, refusing to form into a logical plan.

I could only act
on instinct. If I stayed here, I would die.

I knew how it
would happen, had always known. I would simply stop breathing. It would happen
when I was all alone. It would happen
because
I was all alone with no
one to resuscitate me.

So I had to keep
moving.

I didn’t like
finding my torn dress on the floor. Why had I carried it down from the attic
only to leave it out in plain sight, like evidence?

I picked it up,
intending to throw it away but the waste basket in the bathroom was overflowing
with tissues and Q-tips and last month’s used hair dye kit.

I stuffed what
was left of my dress under the bed and searched for my pink dice, wanting to
feel the smooth cubes in my hand. Sometimes I left them in the kitchen. I didn’t
want to go all the way back downstairs.

Outside, the
wind howled.

Keep moving
.

I decided to go
up to the attic. Clothes littered the floor there too. The bed was a disaster
with the mosquito net half down, blood on the sheets. My mother’s hope chest
had been plundered. I vaguely remembered being the one who plundered it. There
was something up here I needed.

My gaze darted
from one thing to the next, until I saw the knife on the floor where Devon had
cast it. A knife would be handy, much handier than a gun.

It was pretty
with its ivory handle. I touched my finger to the sharp edge. How would I carry
it? I considered strapping it to my thigh with a garter belt but it wasn’t the
right size. I didn’t want to think about it too much because it was insane to
be wondering how to conceal a steak knife.

But it was good
to have a weapon, I thought, since I couldn’t stay in the house and everyone
knew storms brought out the crazies.

Or was it the
full moon? A lunar eclipse? The stroke of midnight? I checked my watch. 11:59.

* * *

The knife fit in
my mother’s Louis Vuitton bag. It felt ominous carrying a concealed weapon.

I had to park
five blocks from the bar. The wind whipped my hair and lifted my skirt. Rain
pelted my face. When I pushed through the door, I was greeted by emptiness.
Only a few people sat at the bar. A leather-clad couple hovered by the juke
box. No band. And no Devon.

I ordered my
usual 7&7 and asked the bartender what happened to the live music. He said
the band got stuck on the freeway behind a jack-knifed semi. I sipped my drink
and had to listen to songs I didn’t like blaring from the juke box. The scene
felt unreal, as if I’d slipped into an alternate reality.

Where did Devon
go when he disappeared?

I checked my
watch, accustomed to synchronizing my sips with my lucky number. I didn’t have
a lucky number tonight, and it felt like the stars were aligning against me.

I downed my
drink and crunched ice. I didn’t feel freed from my rituals. I felt at the
whims of the night, thrown against a raging sea of chaos. Even though there
were so many things Devon refused to give me, he gave me one thing I could
count on: the moment. When I was with him, I wanted nothing else.

I left the bar
and walked down the boardwalk. No one was out. The spindly street lamps
creaked. The world felt as empty as the bar. Above me, wind blew clouds across
the sky. Stars emerged.

I got in my car
and meant to go home but then I thought: Where is 21698 Stargazer Lane, anyway?