A Taste of You

by Jennifer Stevenson

  Nick looks around. “I tied him up and left him unconscious.”

  “You left him unconscious? Don’t you know he’s got the coin?”

  “Does he?” Nick frowns.

  “Dammit!” I struggle up onto my knees. The world swims around me.

  Nick helps me to my skates. The feel of his hands on me is died-and-gone-to-heaven. I sway there, feeling the ache in my side throbbing with a weird pleasure-pain as I pull in his prana, while the air soaks me with the prana my girls are making.

  Then he kisses me.

  He’s all swirly inside, emotionally. Well, I resemble that. I cling hard to him, feeling the heat of his mouth, his desperately plunging tongue, his hands kneading my shoulders. I also feel his confusion. He pulls away and looks at me. He looks a little swoony himself.

  “Do — do you have to kill me?” he says.

  My mouth falls open. “Where did that come from?”

  “I need to know,” he says, staring past me at derby girls whirling by.

  “Why?” I blink. “Do you mean, to keep my secret?”

  “Nnno.”

  “Why would you have to die?”

  His body heat flares. In his aura, I feel that swirling emotional confusion. I wish for once that I could read thoughts, like Sageman.

  He says, “Like you killed that guy in the alley. Will he become a vampire?”

  I give a panicky half-laugh. “No!”

  “Do I have to die to? To be with you?”

  That reminds me horribly of my first sexual encounter ever. Seventeen. Hormones raging. Neighbor boy. His sofa. Crazy feelings all over my body and the hunger raging in me. The feel of him softening in my arms, softening to powder.

  I turn cold at the thought. “I would do anything to prevent that.”

  But Nick and I have already gone that far. All the way and farther. I have no idea how far we might go before — oh.

  He wants to be with me.

  “I don’t know,” I admit. “You’re the first person I ever—” I take a deep, wobbly breath. I feel a tear begin to leak out of my eye. “I must be the most clueless vampire.”

  I look at him shyly. I open my mouth. I know something soppy is going to come out with my next breath.

  Something screams right over our heads.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  We both cringe and duck. It screams again, louder, a huge eagle screech with a deep dragon-y note at the end. We look at each other. A high humming sound begins, quiet at first, then stronger. We look up.

  The power tower is moving over our heads. It seems to be pulling on its wires with those short, stiff, steel arms. Way up there, by the tower’s steel top, I see a blue haze, like a compact little cloud, or a piece of the sky that has somehow come loose and stuck on the tower-top.

  My eyes feel like golf balls. I cling to Nick’s arm.

  Closer to us, on the near leg of the tower about ten feet up, Sageman is clinging to some ladder rungs. He has an evil look in his eye.

  This has gotten past the point where a half-dead vampire, a bunch of girls on skates and one guy, admittedly a hunk, can cope.

  “Call the cops!” I yell over the now continuous scream of bending metal and stretching wires.

  Nick yells, “What with? Your mother took my cell phone when those derby girls of yours showed up to chase me out of her hospital room. Use your phone!”

  “It’s in my fanny pack,” I say direly. “With,” I remember now, oh, shit, “the elixir!” I point.

  Up there on the ladder, Sageman hangs, looking down over his shoulder at us with malign glee. And my fanny pack is slung over his shoulder.

  I start swearing again. Sageman! Of course Nick didn’t think he might have extra powers beyond thought reading and whatever. He’s got the coin, he may have hurt Katterfelto, he’s managed to wake this metal monster up and obviously plans to make it stomp us, and he’s got my fucking phone.

  Sheesh. Cut a girl off from their cell phone and she feels like she’s lost a limb.

  We’re surrounded by my teammates now, who stop circling us and crowd close, mostly so they can make themselves heard over the shrieking steel and wires.

  “Can you run?” Irrita Belle yells to me.

  “Probably not,” I admit.

  “I’ll carry you,” Nick announces, mister big hero. He bends, wraps his arms around me, and starts to stand up — and stops. “Damn.” He’s panting.

  “I knew it,” I say. I shove him away from me and nearly shove myself off my skates. Nick doesn’t move. I yell, “Everybody back! Get back! Start skating again!”

  Nick looks at me as if I’ve wounded his machismo.

  “I’ve drained you too much,” I say. “Get away!” I make shooing motions. Something falls on me from above, a pencil? I look up.

  It must be something out of Sageman’s pocket, because he fumbling in his trouser pocket and stuff is dribbling down on us as he does.

  He’s fishing for the coin!

  He’s going to make another wish!

  Oh. Double. Shit!

  The girls start skating again. With a leap of hope, I see someone arriving beyond them, but it’s not cops, it’s Fist Kist and Donna Draper, with Katterfelto in tow. He looks terrible.

  “What are you doing?” I scream at them. “Keep him away!”

  The tower leg beside me gives a shudder, and the asphalt buckles under my skates. I stumble and try to leap out of the way and trip over some rubble. The ground comes at my face. I need to take these damned skates off, I think, waiting to hit the ground.

  But Nick catches me and steadies me. He seems to be recovering fast. How does he do that?

  I’m feeling a bit better myself. I push him off again, though it kills me to let go of his warm arm and his life-giving prana.

  “Miz Hel, you haff done well!” Katterfelto hollers when he comes closer to me. He’s gray and tottery.

  “Are you okay?” I yell.

  “He was fibrillating when we got him out of the car,” Fist says. Fist is a nurse trainee. “We did CPR for a while. He wouldn’t let us call an ambulance.”

  “Thank God,” I say.

  “What’s happening?” Donna says.

  Katterfelto is looking from Sageman, ten feet up on the tower, to the top of the tower, which is bending fiercely against the wires like a toddler trying to march against a big wind. The mad scientist beckons to me and Nick. We follow him a few feet, only to look back in terror at the sound of a new crackling rumble.

  The power tower leg is working itself free of the asphalt.

  We all skitter backward. Over the racket, I yell the bad news to the mad scientist.

  “I see,” Katterfelto says, perfectly calmly. He squints at the tower with its crown of blue cloud. “I do not think our friend has chosen a very intelligent assistant.”

  We all jump back another few yards when the tower yanks a second foot out of the asphalt. The free legs are each shod in a huge ball of concrete topped with a layer of asphalt.

  “Perhaps if you were to lure it even further?” Katterfelto hollers.

  “What?” we all scream.

  “If you can coax it to break free of the rest of the grid, it vill break its connection to the source of its life.”

  “What?” Nick howls.

  But I get it. “The prana reservoir. That’s how it came to life in the first place.”

  “What?” Nick yells in my ear.

  I ignore him. I explain to Katterfelto that Sageman up there is asking the coin for God knows what other powers. I warn him that Sageman can read thoughts.

  I’m looking at Sageman as I say this. He gives an evil grin, so I know he can hear me — speaking or thinking.

  “Haff you taken the elixir yet?” Of course Katterfelto would go off on his mad science riff at a time like this.

  “What? No way!” I yell.

  “But it is the ultimate weapon! I assured you of this!”

  “Yeah, yeah, I heard you — look out!”


  We all scream and retreat again. The tower is scrabbling with its huge, clumsy, concrete feet on the asphalt in front of it, bending at the waist, struggling to get its rear feet out of the pavement.

  All four feet come loose, and the steel monster leaps forward. In one titanic stride it has caught up with us.

  Everybody scatters. The derbs are on wheels. They move like windblown leaves. Two of them hustle Katterfelto between them.

  Nick and I stumble together, neither of us in the best of shape. Before we can get ten yards, a huge glob of concrete and asphalt stomps down beside us, sending crushed pavement showering all over.

  Sageman’s voice comes from above. “What is it? What’s this elixir?” he demands. “Tell me! Or I’ll have you crushed!”

  “Uh—” I whisper. This is so stupid. He’ll try the elixir and nothing will happen and he’ll be furious and he’ll kill us all.

  Sageman screams again, “Katterfelto! Tell me what it is, or they die!”

  Katterfelto thinks it’s the ultimate weapon.

  The thought is in my head before I can stop it.

  Like a bunny in the headlights, I look up at Sageman.

  He’s drinking the elixir.

  Oh, well. Maybe it’ll distract him.

  I shove Nick as hard as I can. He totters and goes over. At the same time I gather what little oomph I have, crouch, and jump off my toe stops, as high as I can jump.

  I land belly-down on the asphalt that is the power tower’s shoe.

  “What are you doing?” he yells.

  “I’m gonna try and suck this monster dry!” I scream.

  “What!?” he yells again, but the tower is moving again. The power lines up at the top whistle and sing with tension.

  The leg I’m clinging to lifts ponderously. The steel leg is too big around for me to hold, but the blob of asphalt-encrusted concrete on its terrible foot has plenty of handholds, if I can keep a grip. My skates flail in the air as I squirm closer to the leg and get a hand on the steel.

  And bang! a huge charge of prana zaps through me.

  I feel stronger already. I squirm closer and get a better grip on the concrete footing. My fingers dig into the stone. Hey, I’m really strong! I suck harder. More prana rushes into me.

  The tower lifts its foot higher.

  My teammates scream.

  “Keep luring it!” Katterfelto yells.

  “What?” I hear Dom-De-Dom-Dom holler.

  Stomp! Stomp! The tower clomps forward, making only inches of headway with each step, while the wires hold it back.

  “Lure! Coax! Tease it! Make it follow you!” Above the screaming of the overstretched power lines, Katterfelto’s crappy mad scientist accent gets worse. I can’t believe he’s such a dedicated phony.

  “But he’s not a phony,” I hear a strange, high voice say, quite close to me.

  My head jerks around. Above me, Sageman is dangling from the last rung of the ladder. His body swings and sways as the monster power tower stomps after my derby sisters one ponderous foot at a time. There’s something odd about Sageman. His clothes swing around as if they’re falling off him.

  Ew. I don’t want my last sight on earth to be his bare, withered ass flapping around above me.

  I shut my eyes and pull another hit off the power tower.

  The tower lurches one more step — then another. I feel it yank against the wires up top, and I know we’re close.

  More sounds of metal screaming. I dig in with my fingers and risk a squint upward.

  The tower is bending in half. It reaches — reaches — my girls are taunting it now, standing under it and bouncing on their skates, “Nyah nya-nya nyah nyah!”

  A warm body falls on top of me.

  Great, now I have to fight this old cocksucker. I roll painfully on the lumpy concrete, lashing out with one skate.

  “Ow! Hel, no!” It’s Nick. He’s thrown himself on top of me.

  “You idiot,” I gasp. He feels terrific. I try to squirm out from under him, but he’s holding me with both arms and both legs. His sweet, horny energy floods me, mingled with big jolts of the prana coming off the power tower.

  I hear choruses of screams from the derby girls, Katterfelto shouting, the squealing, groaning metal of the bending power tower, and then a sound like an enormous gunshot, POW!

  Then another shot, POW! Then another.

  I feel the tower jerk with every POW!

  The tower groans over us.

  The shots come faster. A whispering, whistling singing fills the air, coming closer and closer. Something heavy slams into Nick’s back. I feel it through him and I try to squirm around so that I can shield him, but he’s holding me too tightly. I bury my face in Nick’s hair, feeling his breath on my breast. “I love you, Nick.”

  “Love you too, Hel,” I think I hear him say, muffled against my scrawny chest.

  Then the sky over us is blotted out.

  I have one moment to wrap my arms around Nick’s head, before all that electrical wire comes clangety-crashing down over us, coils and coils of it.

  The tower gives a giant jerk and a long, descending groan, and stops moving.

  Chapter Thirty

  A bath of prana pours over me.

  It feels like dawn breaking all over the world, one endless, continuous moment of explosive light, the sun kissing the face of every single thing there is, a tree and a bird and a house and a road and another tree and another tree, one after the other, without end.

  It feels like the music, bringing every cell in my body alive, racing through me on electric grace notes.

  It feels like the biggest hit of prana I’ve ever had, ever. I’m totally plugged into Nick. I wonder if we will burn up together.

  A length of wire thick as my thumb falls across my back and then bounces away with a boinging sound, and then the wire is all around us, piled over us like a messy bird’s nest.

  And then, miraculously, there’s silence.

  Nick lies on me, heavy and motionless. Oh, Nick.

  Then he lifts off me and runs his hand down my side where Sageman staked me. His hand slicks over bloody but unbroken skin. I feel no pain. He strokes my temple. I feel his palm pouring a good feeling into me everywhere he touches me.

  “Nick!” I slide away from him carefully, afraid to see him dissolve into dust. The prana is roaring between us, gushing out of him. I feel stronger with every heartbeat.

  No fair. He’s dying, and, apparently, I’m going to live. Again.

  Tears blur my view of him as he strokes my face. “You’re a mess, girl,” he says.

  I sniffle and choke on a sob. “You’re no oil painting, either.” But now I can see him. Blood and dirt smear his face, and he has the start of a dandy black eye, but his eyes seem brighter than ever and he smiles into my face with a tenderness I can barely stand to look at. Who has ever looked at me like that? I thrust away the past. All I’ll ever have is this moment with Nick.

  I try to memorize it as hard as I can.

  “What the—?” He looks past me. “What happened to the sun?”

  We’re under a pile of loose wire. Sunlight filters down through chinks and gaps in the tangle of wire.

  Nick grunts. “I think it’s on my leg.”

  I reach back and shove the wire off his shin, and he sighs. He convulses, curls up around me, grabs me with both arms, wraps his legs around mine, and holds me.

  “Nick!” I try to shove the wires off his back. They move, barely. “Nick!”

  But he’s shielding my face with his palm, smiling, coming closer, closer, smiling, kissing me.

  A voice comes from quite nearby. “They’re moving!”

  Go away, I think, because Nick is kissing me. I sink into happiness, feeling all his glorious boiling bright energy fill me until I’m bursting with it. I kiss him back as hard as I want to. He takes it. Oh, thank God.

  “I cannot see — can someone reach them?” It’s Katterfelto. “You are small, can you crawl to them?”


  That’s a buzzkill. I pull away from Nick’s mouth. “Why didn’t you call me if you were on my side?”

  He snuggles closer to me, insinuating his whole body over mine, angle to angle, hip to hip, until he’s crushing me under his wonderful weight. “Your derby girls showed up and chased me out of your mom’s hospital room. She stole my cell phone, by the way.”

  “She what?”

  “Your mom picked my pocket. Then I ran for my car, and your derby girls whomped the shit out of me in the parking ramp until I finally got away.” His lips touch my ear, my neck, my ear again.

  I shiver. “Kiss me again.”

  But the wires are being pulled away. More and more sunlight comes down on us.

  Nick groans. “I guess we have to get up now.”

  I shut my eyes against the tangle of wire and bits of sunlight overhead. I sigh. “Sucks.”

  “We could tell them to go away,” he suggests. My God, he has such a boner. It’s digging into my lap.

  But the moment is gone.

  Something hits the wires over Nick’s head, and falls tinkling onto the concrete by my face.

  It’s a teeny tiny glass bottle.

  “Hey, there’s a little kid stuck up there on the tower!” yells Dom-De-Dom-Dom.

  “Don’t move!” Bichon Frizzy yells.

  Nick picks up the teeny bottle, squints at it, and shakes it. It’s empty.

  “Uh-oh,” I say quietly.

  Nick cranes his neck and looks up. I try to see past him.

  That strange, high voice calls, “Jones?”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The strange voice says, “It’s me, Sageman. I won’t harm you or Ms. Nagazy.” He doesn’t sound like Sageman. He sounds like a kid.

  I start swearing under my breath.

  The kid voice says, “Please, I assure you. Here. I’ll prove I mean no harm.”

  “Stay there!” Sacker Tart yells. “He’ll fall right on top of them if he tries to move. You guys, get this stuff stretched out.” She organizes Sageman’s rescue while I swear and swear and swear under my breath.

  He must have held on all that time, while the power tower was trying to walk.