Valentines Heat I

by Ally Shields, Nessie Strange, Keith Melton, CL Bledsoe

  Inside, there were a few couples sharing pies, a couple bored-looking employees. Delilah staggered to the first person she saw, who was a skinny, freckled, red-haired guy sitting across from a pretty, red-haired woman.

  “I need your phone.” Delilah held out her hand.

  The woman looked like she wanted to kill Delilah. “Excuse me?”

  The guy looked confused until Delilah reached out and touched his nose.

  “Boop,” she said.

  The guy smiled like this wasn’t absolutely crazy-town and dug his phone out of his pocket. The woman reached across the table for it, but the guy jerked it away and offered it to Delilah, wearing this dreamy grin.

  “It’s OK,” I said to the woman, who had progressed beyond annoyance and was on her feet now. “We had an accident. We just need to call the cops.”

  I could see the struggle on the woman’s face. She looked from the guy who I assumed was her husband, who just sat there grinning, to me and Emily, who was wearing this super-serious expression which I’m sure I matched, to Delilah, who was struggling to try to figure out how to operate the phone. The woman made a decision, which was a bad one, though who could blame her. She snatched the phone out of Delilah’s hand.

  “I’ll call the cops,” she said.

  It’s not that Delilah literally transformed; some part of my rational mind knew that it was just the pheromones and the drugs. But it sure as hell looked like she grew a few feet taller, her face shifted into something a lot scarier and toothy, and her eyes started actually glowing red.

  “I’m calling my man!” Delilah screamed and snatched the phone back. Emily and I were incapable of acting. The woman stood there, staring, looking like she might wet herself. “Sit,” Delilah said, distracted again by the phone. The woman sat. “Enjoy your dinner.” Delilah waved toward the pizza. The guy started eating again. The woman was too freaked out, but she didn’t argue.

  “Would you like some help?” I asked.

  Delilah whined like a child then and thrust the phone to me. “Call,” she said.

  I dialed Dave’s phone. “It’s ringing.”

  Delilah snatched it away. She listened for a moment and then tsked. “Voice mail.” She slapped the phone back onto the table.

  “Well, leave a message!” Emily said.

  The woman sat rigid and terrified while the guy wolfed down pizza. I smiled as nicely as I could and picked the phone back up. “Hey, Dave, it’s Daisy. Um, we got roofied at the party, and Delilah is kind of losing her shit, which means everyone around us is losing their shit. So, if you could come to…” I turned to the woman. “Where are we?”

  Her eyes widened but she didn’t answer.

  “We’re at some pizza place by Hopkins. So, come get us!” I hung up and dialed Nathan, the Hero of Baltimore, my go-to confidant in such a situation. “Just one more,” I said to the woman. “Thanks so much for this.” That one went to voice mail, also. “Seriously?” I told him the same thing I’d told Dave, but I added. “It isn’t Delilah’s fault, so don’t be a dick about it.” And I hung up and set the phone down. “Thank you. Um…” I didn’t really know what to say. “Have a good night!”

  While I’d been calling for reinforcements, Delilah and Emily had disappeared. I found them at the counter.

  “Gimme some motherfucking pizza!” Delilah screamed to the guy behind the counter.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, but if you don’t have any money, you can’t have any pizza.”

  I checked my pockets and realized that in addition to our phones we’d lost our money. Emily was trying and failing to calm Delilah down.

  “Please give her some pizza,” she finally said to the guy, but he wasn’t having it. She gave me a desperate look when I came up.

  “Hey,” I said to the guy. “Why aren’t you in love with her?”

  He laughed at that. “Oh honey, she wishes.”

  “Maybe it’s wearing off?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Emily said. “I don’t think he, you know, likes her.”

  It took me a second to process that. “Sir, do you mind if I ask if you’re gay? It’s kind of a matter of life-and-death importance.”

  “You need to leave,” he said. “I will call the police.”

  “We just did,” Delilah said. “Called my man. But he didn’t answer.” She started crying or at least acting like she was crying. The guy rolled his eyes and disappeared into the back for a second.

  “Let’s just go,” Emily said.

  “Food might be a good idea, though,” I said. “It could absorb the drugs.”

  “I don’t think he’s going to give us any pizza.”

  The guy returned shortly after that with a pizza box.

  “Listen, Jim messed this pizza up. We’re going to have to throw it, so you can have it, but you have to leave. Now.”

  I took it. “Thank you. I’m sorry if I offended you with my question. It really is important.”

  He winked at me then, which I took to be a yes.

  * * *

  Outside, everybody was Kung Fu fighting. OK, well, they were mostly just hitting each other with whatever they could find, mostly missing, and then falling over, which let the other guy kick them. And then fall over…

  “People really don’t know how to fight,” I said.

  “In Israel, everybody has to serve in the army,” Emily said. “I bet they all know how to fight.”

  This wasn’t totally fair; some people really were beating the hell out of each other in perfectly respectable ways, but most of them weren’t.

  “Too many video games,” I said.

  Emily nodded in agreement.

  In front of the pizza place there were a couple sad, spindly-looking metal tables. We put the pizza on one and pulled up rickety chairs. Emily opened it up.

  “Wow,” I said.

  It was a colorful hodgepodge of every pizza I could think of: white sauce with chicken, pineapple, I’m pretty sure lettuce, and all sorts of other stuff.

  “It looks like pizza threw up on it,” I said. That made Emily giggle.

  “I ain’t eating that,” Delilah said.

  “We all need to eat it,” Emily said. “It will help us come down.”

  Delilah shook her head like a petulant child.

  “I’ll try it,” Emily said. “To see if it’s OK.”

  Delilah and I watched as she took a piece and carefully tried it. She chewed and swallowed and tried another piece.

  “It’s not ba—AAAAH!” She screamed and fell face-forward onto the table.

  “Aaaah!” Delilah and I both screamed back.

  “Gotcha!” Emily said, sitting back up. “It’s pretty good, actually. All the ingredients kind of blend together.” She took another bite and chewed happily. “Man, I’m hungry.”

  I tried some. “She’s right; it’s actually pretty good.”

  “Uh-uh,” Delilah said. “I’m on a diet.”

  “Eat it,” I said.

  She shook her head; her mouth squinched up.

  “Your loss,” Emily said. “I think it’s the best pizza I ever had.”

  One of the side effects of the drugs we’d been slipped was that we were ravenous—or maybe we just hadn’t eaten in forever. I finished a piece and started on a second while Emily was still working on her first. Delilah’s eyes kept going from our mouths to the pizza, and she finally grabbed a piece and shoved almost the whole thing into her mouth.

  “It’s terrible!” she said.

  I grinned. “I know. Now eat it.”

  * * *

  As we ate, a news van pulled up on the street nearby. A female reporter got out and a cameraman set up. As we watched, the woman started talking as the guy filmed, and after several seconds, she screamed at him and started hitting him in the side of the head with the microphone. He threw the camera at her, which she dodged, and they started slapping at each other. Before she lost it, we heard some of the news report.

  “Did she say
that the riot was spreading?” Emily asked.

  “I think she said it was over a ten-block radius,” I said. “I wonder if it would help if Delilah was inside.”

  Delilah chewed, staring at the top of the table.

  “Are you feeling any more, you know, in control?” I asked her. She looked thoughtful for a moment and then stuck her tongue out, showing me her partially chewed pizza. Emily snorted laughter.

  “I’m serious,” I said. “You’ve got to get control over this.”

  “Wah, wah, wah,” Delilah said. She pointed her finger like she was lecturing. “I’m serious,” she said.

  “Eat your pizza,” I said.

  It had been a large, but we polished it off without even really tasting it. Soon, there was nothing left but a greasy box. Out in the street, the reporter and cameraman were on the ground. It looked kind of like they were leg wrestling while still slapping at each other.

  A police car cruised by.

  “Crap,” I said.

  It screeched to a stop beside us. The door opened, and Dave jumped out and ran up to us.

  “Dave!” I said.

  “Dave!” Emily said.

  Delilah was still so wasted that she seemed to think it would be a good idea to pretend to be mad at Dave right then, or maybe she really was mad at him.

  “Delilah!” he said, but she wouldn’t look at him. He squatted down and looked in her eyes, which was a challenge because she was fighting him, trying to turn her head away. “Dilated pupils,” he said. “Bloodshot eyes.”

  “We were drugged,” I said.

  “That’s why we had pizza,” Emily said.

  There was noise all around us as people continued fighting. I explained that I thought she had lost control of her powers because of the drugs, and now everyone was fighting over her.

  “I don’t know how to make it stop,” I added.

  He studied her. “I have an idea.” He caressed the side of her face. “Hey, beautiful.”

  She smiled up at him, and he leaned in and kissed her.

  I felt the change almost instantly. I guess this particular pheromone didn’t depend on attraction, because suddenly I wanted to hump anything and everything. I looked at Emily and she blushed. The sounds of violence died down as the pheromone reached people. The cameraman and reporter were still leg-locked, but they weren’t quite slapping at each other anymore. Now they were tearing each other’s clothes off. Farther down the road, two drivers had been fighting each other: one had the other in a headlock. Suddenly, the tone of the struggle changed, and they slipped into an embrace. It was like that as far as I could see; people who’d been trying to tear each other’s heads off a moment before were making out.

  “Wow,” Emily said.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Delilah and Dave were kissing passionately. She swept the pizza box off, pulled him to the table, hopped up on it, and pulled him to her.

  “Oh, um,” he said. “I’m not sure this is the best…”

  “You better do it,” I said. “If you make her mad, you might trigger the apocalypse again.”

  Delilah was lying back onto the fairly small table, her arms around Dave, who leaned over her, hesitating, so that she hung from him in a way that resembled somebody hanging from a jungle gym.

  “It’s just,” Dave said, “you’re, you know, not yourself.” She was stretching up to kiss his face over and over, little pecks from his neck to his cheeks to his forehead. It wasn’t exactly an erotic thing to watch, but it did keep Dave from being able to gather his thoughts enough to decide what to do.

  He turned his head away to look at me.

  “I don’t know, man; she’s your girlfriend.”

  The kisses were getting slower and more passionate, except she was still pretty wasted so her mind wasn’t quite there. She wrapped her mouth around his nose and sucked on it.

  “Ew,” Emily said.

  Delilah released his nose with a loud pop. I decided I’d had enough of the show.

  “At least people aren’t fighting anymore,” Emily said. “I wish I had somebody to make out with.”

  “Well don’t look at me—oh shit! What time is it?” I looked for my cell phone, which was still missing.

  Emily shook her head. I turned to Delilah and Dave, but Dave was definitely losing the battle against his better nature, because Delilah had wrapped her arms and legs around him and seemed to be licking his face, which, again, wasn’t so much erotic but was definitely enthusiastic. I caught his eye, and he gave me a halfhearted little wave. I tore my eyes away with some effort. If I’d had my phone, I’d record that shit so fast.

  “So, um,” I said. “Come to a lot of these parties?”

  “Some,” Emily said. “I mean I used to.” Emily had been kind of a party girl when we first moved into the dorm, but lately she’d really settled down and was focusing on her grades.

  “You know,” I said, “I’m really impressed by how hard you’ve been working in your classes and everything.”

  She smiled. “Thanks.”

  Behind us, Dave and Delilah were moaning.

  “I feel like I struggle to keep up, but you just ace everything—I don’t mean, like it’s easier for you. You study all the time. I see how dedicated you are. You deserve it.”

  The moaning was becoming more rhythmic. Dave gave these little grunts that made me think of a puppy having a nightmare while Delilah sounded like they were having full-on sex.

  “I appreciate that, Daisy,” Emily said. “Especially coming from you.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. I had to speak kind of loud over the grunting. The table—I assume it was the table; I wasn’t about to look—was creaking and groaning under the strain.

  She gave me a shy grin. “Oh, you’re just so smart and everything.”

  “Me?” I said. I laughed a little at that.

  “Yeah. You read all the time and you know things… I never read, you know, until I had to for classes.”

  “You’re pre-vet,” I said. “I’m working on an English degree. Probably.”

  “Still undecided?”

  I shrugged. “Yeah.”

  “You’ll figure it out.”

  The moaning and squeaking were speeding up. We stepped closer to each other to be able to hear.

  “I just don’t really know what I want to do. But you, you’re going to save lives.”

  “Rich people’s pets’ lives.”

  It surprised me to hear her say that. It sounded like something I would say. Also, I assumed she was rich.

  “Really?”

  It was her turn to shrug. “Don’t get me wrong; I love animals. But it’s weird when somebody’s cat has better health insurance than some people do.”

  “Yeah, I get that. And don’t take this the wrong way, but I kind of thought you were loaded.”

  She laughed. “Me? No way. My grandfather left me a college trust fund. But my family’s broke.”

  “Really?”

  She nodded. “My mom’s a teacher and my dad’s an administrator.”

  “Wow. You don’t seem like…you seem more like a socialite.”

  “I guess I’m coming out of a rebellious phase. Your mom’s a nurse, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I don’t think I could do nursing.”

  The moans and creaks and various noises were getting pretty intense. Emily and I tried to keep the conversation going, but it was just too distracting. We both kept looking at each other and then getting embarrassed and looking away toward the street or the sidewalk, wherever people weren’t humping.

  Finally, Dave whined—like a little dog, I thought—and Delilah…I don’t really know what she did, but it was loud and intense.

  “That seemed kind of quick,” Emily said, which made us both giggle.

  There was a long moment of silence, and Dave slid off. We gave him a moment to fix his clothes, while Delilah smoothed her dress back down and rolled off the table. She landed on all fours, like
a freaking cat, and rose slowly.

  “Better,” she said.

  I’m not into girls, but wow did she look hot right then. I literally had to close my mouth to stop from drooling. Emily started making a funny noise, and I nudged her.

  “Pheromones,” I said.

  “Yeah,” she said.

  Delilah stood tall, all traces of giggles and stoned-ness gone.

  “Now, my friends, we are going to find the little boys who caused this, and we’re going to explain some things to them.”

  “Does that mean you’ve got your power under control?” I asked.

  She nodded, serious.

  “Are people going to stop, you know, humping?”

  “It will take a while for the effect to wear off. I also think we weren’t the only ones drugged. Anyone who drank that punch would be feeling the same effects we did.”

  “So it was the punch that was spiked?” Dave asked. He was flushed, and his legs were a little shaky, but he was back in cop mode. “Do you have any?”

  “We left it in the…place,” Emily said, motioning back up the street.

  I looked at her and the street and back at her. “Should we go get it? Do you need to analyze it or something?”

  “It would help us make sure,” Dave said.

  “I’m sure,” Delilah said. She started walking back toward the party.

  Emily called out, “It was kind of dangerous back there.”

  “They’re not fighting anymore. They’re humping,” I said.

  “That’s true.”

  We started back up the road in the direction we’d come from, though, to be honest, I didn’t really remember much beyond that or where the party had been. We were just following Delilah and Dave. I felt a hand close around mine, and Emily was beside me. It was kind of sweet, actually. We held hands, swaying them back and forth like little kids, as we passed people humping desperately, usually with their clothes still on or only partially removed—enough to get the job done, I guess.

  “You’re my best friend,” Emily said, apropos of nothing.

  “Thank you,” I said. I didn’t know how to respond. “You mean a lot to me.”

  “Really?” she said.