Sugar Skulls Read Free

seconds.
    All these months, there’s been nothing. But just now? I felt it. I feel it. I pulse with life, lightning dancing across my skin as she batters the crowd with furious verses.
    But I’m stuck on that first gasp.
    One note. One word. She laid me low and resurrected me in one fell swoop.
    Who is this girl?
    V
    Wrapping the microphone cord around my hand, I really lay into the lyrics, jacking straight into the brains of the audience. The boys and girls slosh around the pit like iridescent-foamed water in a dirty fish tank.
    Except for the guy. The guy at the bar with the piercing gaze and the messy hair and the look of a lost soul. I’m too far away to see the color of his eyes, and he isn’t wearing anything worth noticing. Not the sharp edges of clothes fresh off the rack. Not the silver glint of a dozen facial piercings. None of the writhing subdermal implants or interchangeable magnetic tattoos that are the latest trends to hit hard and fast. At least, not any I can see from my vantage point. Black shirt and jeans that help him fade into the background. Dark blond, lacking all the bleach and color of anyone who spends any time in the sun or a salon. Even leaning back, every line of his body indicates a readiness to bolt.
    I force my attention back to the pit, determined not to spare him another thought.
    Just another gig, Vee. Just another audience. Get through the song, already.
    M
    Need to move. Need to run. Should run. Should get out of here.
    It takes supreme effort to tear my attention away from her long enough to acknowledge her partners in crime. Treble summons entire orchestras and metal bands from her laptop and synth with a few frenzied keystrokes. Trouble snarls with hungry delight as she channels torrents of sound with a pair of haptic gloves, manipulating the very notes midstream like an angry sorceress as holographic turntables whirl in the foreground.
    But front and center, there’s Her. She’s a creature of myth, with Her siren song and Her banshee wail. The set’s barely begun, but the hive’s heart and my heart both beat to Her drum.
    Our eyes finally meet again, and I’m thrown back into a surging sea. When that first note hit, I was a drowning man finally breaking the surface. This time, the current simply takes me.
    Outside, I betray nothing. Cucumber-cool and casual, even as Her eyes narrow and Her gaze bores into me. My crippled nervous system allows little else to show. But inside, I’m a being of crystal, oscillating in perfect harmony.
    Running is the last thing on my mind now.
    V
    I should call a bouncer and have him ejected. Injected. Hauled off for a diagnostic and a thorough probing. There’s something not right. Not right with him. Not right with the way he looks at me or the way the song pours into him like water into the desert.
    I force myself to look away, to push through the next song. If it’s not working for him, he’ll leave, right? He’ll go register a complaint with the main office, and they’ll roll up to the Loft and ask a lot of questions that boil down to the same freaking one I have:
    Why isn’t he responding to the music?
    Approaching the end of the set, the lyrics get rough around the edges, liable to rip if I lean into them any more than I already am. Everyone below me is frantic, writhing. Thrum output’s still on the rise as the lasers scan the crowd, gather up the ambient energy, and funnel it away. Neat, clean, efficient—and why we’re all here.
    Except for the guy leaning against the bar. Separate from the others. Motionless. Gaze latched on me like he’s dying and I have the cure in my pocket.
    That’s when I realize he’s responding, all right. Just not the way I expected.
    Fuck the grid. I’m the one with the power right now.
    M
    The mood is shifting. The air is thick with it, the crowd buzzing and overstimulated, neurons firing and misfiring as the hive responds to Her rage, and She unleashes it. I swear, the ground trembles with