Sugar Skulls Read Free Page B

go!” I’m clinging to the grid, but I could topple off any second now; I can feel the energy snaking over my skin, in between my ears, threatening to bounce me.
    Emergency lighting flickers to life around us, and my stomach clenches. I would puke up my dinner, if I’d eaten anything; instead I manage one good dry heave.
    “You’d better fucking run!” someone shouts at me. Might be a bodyguard. Could be Hellcat Maggie herself. Doesn’t matter, because I’m already skimming down the hall. A hand clamps down roughly on the back of my dress, but I duck and twist. The fabric gives way, exposing my back down to the crack of my ass, and beads rain down on the floor. I whirl around and face my attacker. I don’t know who she is or why she’s chasing me, but adrenaline brings my fist up to connect with her face. She falls back, taking down the three people behind her.
    A knife to my throat, trailed down my neck, along my shoulder. Blood. Screams of pain . . . My screams.
    It’s like my finger’s on the trigger, firing off shots from a memory gun.
    I don’t want to remember any of this, damn it. The mind-scrubs are supposed to wipe out everything: Conversations, the faces of friends-turned-strangers. The way he smelled. The way he touched me.
    But I remember pain like that. I remember the blood . . .
    Sasha stumbles into me and shoves me out of the past. “The back door’s this way!” she gasps between harried steps, her arms full of equipment, wiring spilling out of her embrace and trailing behind her like a disemboweled octopus.
    “Not without Little Dead Thing!” Instead of turning right, I veer left. Another left turn, and I’m back at the dressing room. The styling team already evacuated, leaving behind a debris field of sequins and translucent powder and bits of black lace. Pushing me to one side, Jax grabs a black nylon bag and crams her gloves and mixing console inside. Sasha reaches for her laptop case and tries to wrestle the cord-tangle into submission.
    I end up flat on the floor, pulling an irate and hissing cat out from under the threadbare velvet couch. “Come on, love. Time to bail.”
    With the girls at my heels and Little Dead Thing in my arms, I twist open the heavy stage door. The dark outside surprises me—sporadic backup lights have activated down countless shadowed blocks—but the limo is waiting, engine running, headlights carving out an escape route. I clamber inside, the memories of screams and blood still fresh in my mind as I teeter on the edge of the grid.
    M
    The music is gone, but Her voice remains. My bones resonate with it.
    Trailing my hand down the length of the counter, I quickly retrace my steps, leaving the elevated bar behind for the chaos of the pit. People ricochet off me in the darkness, all grasping for something. Crashing through the crowd, I find one of the propped-open doors. Memory guides me down the halls.
    There are still people in the alcoves, going at it. Unbelievable. Too bad the grid’s not up to harness the energy from those exchanges .
    Another collision with an addled fan sends me stumbling, and I grab the nearest thing in reach: a velvet curtain.
    Not the same curtain—wrong club, wrong time—but close enough. I don’t want to remember this right now. I tear the curtain free from its rings and hurl it aside, taking off down the hall. Gotta keep moving. Maybe I can catch the Skulls before they flee the scene.
    I’m one of the first outside. It was blind luck that a few stumbling pit-dwellers made it out here before me. Some crouch against the wall, huddled together for comfort. Others brawl in the street or just stand around, in total meltdown.
    Something’s missing.
    Buildings all around us are dark, shadows shaped by moonlight and the glow of distant, unaffected neighborhoods. No thrum-collectors to harness clubgoer energy, no substations to process it, no glass-globes transmitting wireless energy back to the citizens.
    The hum is gone. It’s