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The Short Cut
The Angel looked up at the sound of approaching footsteps. They were so soft that first she thought it was one of the spiders returning for the kill, but it was only Billy Ray. He dropped down to the ground before her.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, a concerned expression on his face.
“Burning—” she said, straightening up on her knees. She could see Ray’s concern turned to horror as he realized that the top of her jumpsuit had been slashed open by the snick of a spider’s fang, and then stained with the beast’s ichor after she’d gutted it.
“Shit,” Ray said. “Hang on.”
She watched him with a strange detachment. It was partly the pain from the acidic fluid soaking the front of her clothes, partly, she supposed, the effect of the venomous vapor as it stunned its victim.
Ray grabbed her jumpsuit at the waist and ripped it at the seam. It flew apart at the force of Ray’s strength. He yanked her top away before she knew what he was doing. Underneath the jumpsuit, the front of her sports bra had been snipped in two by the creature’s fangs. One breast was still covered by the fabric of the cup, the other had slipped free.
She felt his hands on her stomach and rib cage. Oddly, it didn’t bother her. It took her a moment to realize that he was using a rag torn from his own fighting suit to carefully blot away the ichor that eaten through her jumpsuit. Fortunately, it had taken most of the venom’s corrosive strength to work through the leather, though her skin was burned in several spots as if touched by a lighted match. Her mind began to clear as Ray ministered to her, and she realized for the first time that she was half-naked before him.
“Think we got most of it,” Ray said, his head bowed before her, concentrating on his task. “This is some strong shit—Jesus Christ!”
The realization that Ray glimpsed her breast flashed through the Angel’s mind, but somehow it didn’t bother her as much as she thought it might. But when she looked at him she saw that he was still concentrating on her stomach, and self-revulsion grabbed her as she realized that he’d seen the scar.
“What happened here?” Ray asked, looking up into her eyes for the first time.
She was caught by his gaze. She couldn’t look away. She knew the scar was hideous. It started at the top of the hidden patch of thick dark hair that grew at the juncture of her thighs and crawled like a pink meandering snake for eight inches up and across her flat, white abdomen.
“My mother did it,” the Angel heard herself saying. Her voice came as if from a great distance.
“Your mother?” Ray asked incredulously.
She nodded. “I came to her the first time I bled. I had no idea what was happening to me. I thought I was sick. That I was going to die. She told me to stop crying. To be calm. That it was the curse that came to all women, but she would save me from it. From that curse and all the curses that came from it. She took me into the kitchen and took a knife out of the drawer and tried to cut out my uterus.”
“Good God,” Ray said.
The Angel was so lost in memory that she didn’t even reprimand him. “I would have died on the kitchen floor if my ace hadn’t turned right then. Somehow I survived the wound, though I’ll never have children. Which is a blessing. They’ll never have to worry about the curse of the wild card.”
Ray grabbed her upper arms so hard his fingers bite into muscle and flesh. “Listen,” he said in an insistent voice, “the wild card virus has killed hundreds of thousands of people. It’s destroyed a lot of lives. Maybe millions. It is a curse, but so’s the goddamned flu. You lived through it. You lived and became something, I don’t know, bigger than human. Stronger. Wilder. More vital and more goddamned beautiful than any frigging angel. For you the wild card wasn’t a curse. It was a damned blessing. Millions of women would kill to be you. Don’t waste your life worrying about some crazy fears your whacked mother had. She was her. You’re you. You’re one in ten million, babe. Never forget it.”
A dam broke in the Angel’s mind. “Do you really think so, Billy?”
“Of course I do, and jeez, don’t cry—”
She threw herself upon him, bearing him down on the ground, her arms going around him and her lips seeking his. They hit his chin, then slipped up and covered his mouth just as he was saying, “Hey!” and she silenced him with her tongue. She saw a startled look in his eyes and then they caught fire and one hand was tangled in her hair and the other was seeking her breast that was swinging free. She shifted her hips giving him more room and his hand found and cupped it, his thumb running over her suddenly hard nipple and she sucked on his tongue in a sudden stab of delight.
She had never felt anything like this. Never. The ecstasy of prayer. Of fasting. Of privation. They all paled beside the sensations that were running like fire on her nerves. Her pelvis pushed against him and she could feel the sudden hardness between his legs even through the fabric of their clothes. She wanted him. She wanted him more than she wanted her God, more than she wanted Heaven.
“Angel,” he panted in her mouth.
“Angel,” John Fortune said, coming around to the back of the truck, “we’re finished. Bruckner says—”
She looked back wildly over her shoulder as John Fortune stared at her, stricken. “Angel?”
“John—”
He turned and ran back to the front of the truck without a word.
Stricken, she turned to look at Ray. “He has a crush on me.”
It sounded so lame as she said it, but Ray only shrugged. “Not a surprise,” Ray closed his eyes for a moment then stood and helped her up. “We’ll talk to him later. Explain things. In the meantime, it’s probably a good thing he interrupted us.” Ray looked around. “This is not exactly the place to lose our heads. We might have really lost them.”
“Is it just an interruption?” the Angel asked, half-afraid of his answer, whatever it would be.
“It better be,” Ray growled.
Bruckner’s voice came from the front seat of the lorry. “Get a move on, will you? It’s getting late. I don’t like to be on the road when the moon’s up.”
The Angel took a step away. Ray caught her hand.
“Here,” he said gruffly. “Can’t have you running around like that.” He stripped off the top of his fighting suit. His body was wired with cabled muscle. The Angel wanted to feel it pressed tightly against her, to run her hands over it all. He smelled of the sweat of battle. He put his shirt around her shoulders, brushing the remaining bra cup off her other breast. He palmed it for a moment and she shivered as the nipple stiffened. She shrugged into the shirt and buttoned it, almost groaning at the unexpected pleasure of the material kissing the tips of her naked breasts.
He kissed her lightly on the lips, unexpectedly gentle. “Go on up to the truck,” Ray said. “I better recover Bruckner’s morningstars.”
She nodded, and ran up to the front of the truck. Bruckner gunned the engine, grinning.
“Climb up, lass. Let’s hit the road.”
John Fortune held the cab door open. He wouldn’t look her in the eyes.
“John,” she said softly, “we’ll talk later.”
He said nothing. She brushed by him, feeling the heat of him.
“You too, lad, let’s get rolling.”
John Fortune swung up to the seat next to her. Bruckner engaged the gears and the truck started to roll.
“Hey!” Ray shouted from the rear. “Don’t forget me.”
The Angel could see him in the rear view mirror. He smiled, bent down to pick up the morningstars, straightened, and started to run toward the truck. He looks like an animal, she thought. A wild, untamed animal. The sudden thought worried her, but she knew that she had gone so far that she couldn’t go back. Not this time.
The truck was rolling, but not fast. Ray caught up quickly, running easily. He had both morningstars in one hand and held out the other for John Fortune to give him a boost up through the open door. The boy reached out, their hands touched and Ray started to pull himself up into the seat. Suddenly, terribly, he screamed.
The stench of burned flesh speared the air.