Page 6 of Vicious
She wrenched my mouth open wide with icy hands. “Let me in!” Her brittle, otherworldly voice grated prickles up myscalp.
I tried to shake her off, but between the juddering, sideways ship and the bitter terror funneling through my veins, I had no traction. Tears slipped down my cheeks while I searched for answers for her sudden betrayal inside her black eyes. She knew how this worked, likely just as well if not better than I did, and this wasn’t it. I fumbled for an iron cube in my pocket and plucked it out, gripping it tight in my fist so it wouldn’t skitteraway.
I jerked my head away from her worming fingertips and choked out, “Goin.”
Her face blurred into a haze of black smoke, and she funneled into my mouth. Old tobacco crawled over my tongue, gagging me, and singed my insides into ash and memories that weren’tmine.
Blood, rope, and Saelis. Stringing them up by the hundreds from the ceiling of theVicious. A burning hatred toward the slimy captain who made her doit.
And pain. Red’s pain became mine, so much so that it became hard to breathe. I clawed at my throat until the sound of a bone-crunching pop in the neck filled my ears from hermemory.
Spinning to my hands and knees, I dry heaved, my whole body trembling. The edges of the iron cube dug into my palm with the force of my grip, and the cube stuck to the sweat there when I forced open my fingers. Before I unglued my tongue from the arid roof of my mouth, an image of Nesbit flashed through my mind. Another of Red’smemories.
Wild hair. Crooked tooth. Him standing somewhere on the ship while gazing into a mirror with wide eyes. Frightened of his ownimage.
My tongue finally touched metal and chased Red and all of her memories away. Gone to wherever the spirits went after they passed through me. I forced the cube down my throat, just to be sure Red made it to the other side, and the fresh parasites in my body soaked in their food source. Continuous jolts of energy rippled from the tips of my ears to my toes as they devoured it, the same result as what powered the space-bending rings, leading me toward a high that left me more breathless than I alreadywas.
I lay there, gasping, but both my body and mind were mine again. I shoved to my feet and immediately lost my balance and crashed into a wall. A real wall this time. The ship had righted itself while I’d helped—was forced to help—Red.
Had she demanded entry through me to the other side so she could show me that last memory of Nesbit? Did that somehow explain why she didn’t want me to go inside the engineroom?
The door was half open now, swaying slightly on its hinges. I started toward it. Red could shove her warning to stay away right up her dead ass. I needed Nesbit’s Mind-I. If she didn’t like it, she could’ve done the search with me and stayed the hell out of mybody.
Still, I tightened my hands into fists at her sudden loss. I’d grown used to her being here. For a ghost, I’d liked her and appreciated her spunk. Smelling her signature tobacco scent had put me at ease knowing she was around here somewhere offering guidance and protection. I supposed this was what I deserved for trusting a ghost when my past had proved I nevershould.
The floor dipped down, taking my stomach with it, and the engine room door swung open a little more, inviting me in. I braced myself against the doorframe and peered in as the ship sank farther down. Around the corner, a guard rail broken in several places circled a large cylinder engine held aloft by titanium poles protruding from the ends. Inside the cylinder, what looked like multi-colored nebulas waved and danced around a million mechanical parts. It whined loudly, paused for a beat, then a softer whir echoed back. That pattern definitely wasn’t how a ship’s engine was supposed tosound.
Pop’s engine room aboard theNebulousalways smelled like oil and was meticulously spotless. This one smelled like sweat and salt, but a greasy feeling slithered beneath my skin and lifted the hair along my arms. Yet I didn’t knowwhy.
Various tools lay scattered in a breadcrumb trail to a thin mattress in the corner of the room. After closing the door behind me, I followed, tapping my fingers on the pocket that held more iron. Heat from the engine swept over my cheeks when I neared it, deepening the greasy sensation into my bones. Something didn’t feel right in here, as if I was far fromalone.
TheViciousshuddered and seemed to sink my feet farther into the floor. We’d landed, which meant I had minutes before someone came looking for me and demanded to know what I was upto.
Several dirty glasses lay at the foot of the mattress with white liquid skimming the bottoms. Definitely not milk residue since Mase was the only milk drinker on the ship. I stopped thinking about what it was because I didn’t want to know. Food wrappers and clothes piled where I imagined Nesbit laid his head. Swallowing hard, I knelt and plucked through them with as little touching aspossible.
Mase’s voice came over the telecom. “Here’s hoping you’ll sail through the friendly skies again with me, folks. If not, well…ah…it’s been nice knowing all of you.” After a moment, the engine began to wind down and his clipped footsteps strode past the closed door on his way to theelevator.
I turned back to Nesbit’s mattress and searched through pockets, inside food wrappers, underneath the mattress, even inside the glasses. Nothing that resembled a piece of thin plastic the size of a small seed. Maybe he’d had his Mind-I on him when he passed through me to the other side. I did find his currency card, though, and pocketed it. Once a thief, always athief.
I stood as a shiver skated up my back. My scalp prickled with the sense that something prowled behind me, watching, memorizing. Slowly, my body tensed, I peered over myshoulder.
Nothing. Not even a ghost creeping up behind me. Sweat beaded all over my face instead of the normal eerie chill I usually felt around something supernatural. Something else entirely,then?
I squeezed my eyes shut and pulled in a shallow inhale. Maybe Red had been right. I shouldn’t have come inhere.
My ears burning for another hint of sound, I turned left, away from Nesbit’s mattress and around the broken guardrail to the other side of the room. Between the engine’s slow grind to a halt, a footstep echoed behind me, on the other side of the engine, from everywhere. Hot air stroked my neck—an exhale, the engine. I didn’tknow.
I backed against the wall, ticking my gaze around the room. A scream welled in my throat, but I swallowed it down. I’d cleared the ship of ghosts. IknewI did. They would’ve violently made themselves known if Ihadn’t.
“Mase?” I whispered. “Is thatyou?”
I slid along the back wall, the engine blocking my view of the door, my palms smearing nervous sweat on the titanium as I went. As I rounded the tip end of the engine, the door became visible. Searching for any sort of movement, I inched toward it, and then shut it behind me on my wayout.
The engine chugged like loud, heavy footsteps. Something rattled and banged behind the closed door, like metal onmetal.
I backed away toward the elevator, watching, listening, until I was close enough to jab the greenbutton.
Across from me, the engine room door swung open on silent hinges. The engine’s dying chugs, so much like footsteps, poured out on a direct path toward me. With a moaned hiss, I spun around and dug my fingernails into the seam that split the elevator doors in two and tried to pry them apart. Finally, adingsounded. The doors parted. I threw myself inside and lunged for the button that would carry meaway.
