Page 102 of Girls Night
I force myself to ignore her. I focus on Electra’s flowers.
“They are no doubt providing you with a little discomfort now, but once osmosis is complete, you’ll feel light as air.”
The Rose Mother’s breath is hot and rancid against my cheek. I keep the image of Electra alive in my head. I do not take my eyes off her flowers.
“Can you feel it, Delphi?” The Rose Mother chortles. Her hips grind against mine – moist leather skin meeting denim. “The two of us connecting?” Her tongue journeys down my face and navigates its way into the side of my mouth.
I think back to the day Electra and I first met. The excitement. The awakening. The lust.
“Absorbing one another?”
The night Electra and I made love in the Three Blind Mice.I love you. I love you. I love you.
“Permeating our membranes?”
I do not look away from her flowers. Not even when I feel as though I’m about to split in two. Not now when the air is charged with an energy far more powerful than anything I’ve felt in a long time.
“Becoming one?”
The hair on my arms rise and I lift my hand to point at Electra’s flowers. The Rose Mother shuts her mouth. The air around us stills.
“Expergisci et florebit quasi lilium!”
Wake up, and bloom.
Chapter Eleven
Wither
Fingers – filthy and cadaverous – claw at my face and enter my mouth. Gagging, I tear my eyes from Electra’s flowers to the Rose Mother on top of me.
“Your focuswillremain on me,” she hisses.
I try fighting against her fingers as they dig into my cheeks and deeper into my mouth. Warm nausea roils in my gut and threatens to explode.
The spell didn’t work. The spell didn’t work. It didn’t fucking work!
Sliding the hand I used to cast the Fong Kong spell between the Rose Mother’s thigh and my hip, I fumble for the switchblade in my jeans pocket. I grab hold of it as best I can, feeling the weight of its metal in my grip. With my other hand, I dig my nails into the Rose Mother’s arm but she doesn’t remove her fingers from my mouth. Instead, she gyrates against me and groans.
“Osmosis begins, Delphi!” She cries out, head rocked back. “Not long now before the seeds within you germinate and I live on through you!”
Something wet and slick drags my attention to my hips. Between the Rose Mother’s fingers, I can make out dozens of thin and earthy brown roots slithering out of her pussy. As though taking on a life of their own, the roots curl and spread. They creep under my shirt and travel over my flesh. I scream, but the only sound that escapes my lips is a choked gurgle.
“I will live forever and ever!” The Rose Mother howls, eyes wide and wild. Her hips pound against my own. Her pigment mutates from leather to vomit green. Tiny horns poke out from under her skin and push through the surface, morphing her skin into bark. Blades of grass rise from her scalp. The roots from her pussy reach my throat and wrap around it. “And this blighted world shall become my garden. And it will be glorious! With my hands, new life will grow, and —”
I rip the switchblade from my pocket, flick it open and lodge it into the wood under her navel. The Rose Mother gasps as amber sap trickles from the wound. Her fingers fly from my mouth, but the roots around my throat tighten. Wrapping her hand around the hilt of the blade, she yanks it out. Specks of wood fall into my eyes.
“Did you honestly think that would work?” She asks, throwing the switchblade into a bush close by. “I am a deity, Delphi. Human weapons cannot harm me in any way whatsoever.”
My vision goes spotty as the roots wrap tighter. Images flash through my head roller coaster quick. Me, crying and alone in the abandoned building. Copper-Eye walking through the door. Promising me a new life and the wonder of magic. Studying spells. Bullied by my siblings. Following Electra between the stalls of the thrumming market in Chinatown. Lips upon hungry, desperate lips. Falling in love. Failing at love. The salty taste of tears mixed with peppermint and blood.
I couldn’t help you. I tried – Jesus Christ, I tried. Forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive –
With what little strength I can muster, I turn my head to Electra’s flowers for a final time…
“Human weapons may not be able to hurt you,” a voice rings out from somewhere far away. It’s familiar. Angry and cruel. “But magic sure as hell can.”
The crack and crunch of wood clears my head and chips shower onto my face. The roots around my neck go slack, just in time for the Rose Mother to howl and clamber to her feet as her right arm falls to the ground.
