A Touch Mortal

Chapter 23





It was just after one in the morning when they left the apartment. Adam barely made it out the door before he froze. Jarrod pushed past him, got his own view of what had stopped Adam, and glanced back at her.

On the stairs sat two teenagers, staring at Eden. The one closest to her held out a handful of money.

“Little late, aren’t you?” Eden asked, forcing the surprise from her face. She turned back to Adam and Jarrod. “Wait here.”

The two Siders who’d been on the stairs followed around the corner. There was no denying that word about her was spreading.

A minute later, back at the base of the stairs, the boys fell into step behind her. She pulled the leftover cash from earlier out of her pocket, added the new bills to the stash, and handed it to Adam.

“That makes rent, right?” A steady ache throbbed deep inside the bones of her arms, the Touch she’d taken in winding its way past her elbows, across her shoulders, and up her neck. She draped her hand against the wall to keep her balance. The fingers burned, but it had nothing to do with the way her knuckles scraped across the brick. Eden blinked hard, trying to clear the sudden blur to her vision.

“Already?” He counted. “With this we’re only a hundred short,” he said. “Plus what we spend tonight.”

Jarrod sped up, pacing her. “How many have you taken since you last dosed us?”

Eden shrugged. The motion knocked her off kilter. She teetered for a split second before she steadied, focusing on the subway entrance only a couple dozen steps away. As she stepped off the curb, Jarrod grabbed her arm, spinning her around. The twirl seemed to keep going after her body stopped. She swallowed a wave of nausea.

“Eden, how many?” he growled.

“A lot, all right!” she yelled. “I don’t need a lecture, Jarrod.”

His grip tightened. “You can’t keep going like this.”

“We could move,” Adam offered up. Just that he was suggesting it made Eden wince. They already knew how it would turn out. The Siders would be there before they’d even had a chance to get settled. It’d been that way when they’d gone from the hotel to the apartment. They’d found her.

Her stomach churned, the taste of warm bile rising into her throat. She fought it back down.

“They’re showing up at night now, and you don’t think we need to talk about this? Figure something out?” Jarrod demanded.

“Isn’t that the point of what we’re doing tonight? We’ll see if it helps. You won the bet, so I’m sticking to my part of it. What else do you want from me?” she asked wearily.

As she made her way down the stairs to the platform, she glanced up to the apartment window where James watched from above. The blinds lowered.

“We’ll figure it out, Jarrod,” she promised. “Ready?” She handed him the key, her platforms clanking down the metal stairs, ending the conversation.

Two trains and a four-block walk later they could hear the thumping. Deep bass beats drew them through empty streets lined with warehouses. A smattering of mortal teens wandered in from the alleys, gathering into a stream funneled toward the same goal. Eden watched them, amused as she followed the crowd. Decked out in Day-Glo and wigs, a few had streamers hanging from their wrists and ankles, turning them into tornados of color when they spun happily. Two in the morning and the rave was just starting to gain strength.

Eden ran two fingers over her perfectly gelled hair, sliding the black waves dancing across her cheeks back into place near her temple. The pin curls had taken forever to get perfect, delicate enough to balance out the punk Goth mix of her outfit with a Suicide Girl edge. Back at the apartment, she’d been careful to separate the pink highlights out, give them their own curls. When it was done, there had been a kick-ass version of a twenties-style movie starlet staring back at her from the mirror.

Jarrod pulled a flyer from his low-slung cargo pants—their official invitation—and handed it to the man at the door. Adam doled out the entrance fees as they strode past, through an enormous metal door into the shadows cast by strobe lights inside.

Eden watched the crowd for a moment, her stomach knotting. Every part of tonight had “bad idea” written all over it. She thought about turning around, heading home, figuring out some other way.

The deep bass pounded its rhythm into her chest, spreading roots that tingled down through her legs and into the floor. The techno beats pulsed with a life of their own, the crowd jumping, spinning under the colored strobes. For just half a second she lost herself in the chaos. When she pulled out of the trance, Adam and Jarrod were there on either side of her, ready. Waiting. It was time to spread the virus.

She tried not to pass herself if she could help it. Her potency meant the difference between shooting sprees and midnight joyrides, stolen lives and stolen kisses. For any hope of survival it had to be diluted through the boys. Especially tonight. Seven. Seven today, but there had been nearly as many yesterday. It was an invitation for disaster.

Jarrod and Adam could handle the extra burst of Touch as long as they dispersed it quick, before it had a chance to settle in them. They were the only ones she trusted her lips around. “It’s gonna be a bigger dose than normal. Ready?”

She shook her fingers out, stalling. Jarrod had already leaned closer. She pressed her mouth against his quickly, careful not to breathe. The sudden buzz that electrified her had nothing to do with the music. They shared a beat before Jarrod pulled away and the song went on. Eyes shimmering, he bit his lip.

She turned to Adam. He slid a hand around the back of her neck and pulled her close in a sudden rush.

The kiss lasted a second too long, the static thrumming through her as the throbbing from the turntables climbed to a crescendo. In the glow of the swirling reds and purples of the lights, Adam didn’t blink, didn’t leave her. A steady single pulse matched the sound of her heart as the DJ spun another record. Eden raised a shaking hand, pointing out into the crowd.

Go. She didn’t bother to say the word, any hope of him hearing her voice above the music lost as the volume shook her. He turned, slipping behind a veil of gyrating bodies. The tremors didn’t stop. He only wanted the extra Touch. She didn’t let herself consider any other possibility.

Alone with the crowd, she had no one to distract her from the fingers, arms, and elbows all around her. Eden’s legs shook with the need to get rid of more. She fought her way toward the middle of the warehouse, tucking her arms across her chest, concentrating on keeping the rhythm outside her head. Adam and Jarrod needed to hurry.

And then someone grabbed her arm and dipped her low before setting her on her feet again. Her hand brushed against bare skin. Her breath caught as the dose of Touch left her. A beautiful rush of endorphins coursed through her, left her lighter. Eden’s hand moved on its own, searching out the next victim. Just a few. The thought was there, disorganized but demanding.

The spin started slow, a delicate twirling as she gave in to the spell the song cast. The beats wound their way into her, hands flying from her sides. As she spun, her fingers danced across a trio of shoulders, exposed collarbones that seemed to lean closer. They want it, she thought, her head pounding, rattling and lost. Every bit of skin she touched glowed, a wide wake of fireflies spreading out behind her as she danced.

The room crushed in, spiraling around her in a blur. The crowd as a whole didn’t matter, only the parts. Her fingers caught cheeks, foreheads, exposed midriffs. Too many. Dozens. Hundreds. Limbs twisting, touching, brushing. Her eyes closed as she let go, lost in the ecstasy, the release of so much poison built up inside. The power ebbed from her, the pure joy of silence as Touch left her. Hair brushed her cheek and a hand cupped Eden’s ear to yell words lost to the decibels. But the contact was there and gone so quickly and then there was only her, dizzy and buried somewhere in the mad mob. The music, the lights; nothing stopped.

She tried to lift a hand, find something to hold onto, steady herself. The awful queasy movement doubled, a feeling of emptiness, holes inside her where the Touch had been.

Words leaped off her tongue and into the silence as the song ended and then she was falling, lost in darkness beyond the strobe lights’ reach. I gave too much, she thought desperately, trying to get an elbow under her, to get up again. Her hand slipped against the concrete, skinning her palm as she sank onto her back.

Her stomach heaved. She barely had time to turn her head before the rush of vomit spilled across the floor. The strobe lights flickered twice in her long blinks before going black.