Moz took me to the F station down the block, and I pulled him to the lip of the stairs, breathed in the subterranean hum for a dizzy and exultant moment, like when la musica traveled through me. The beast rumbled, twisting happily in my guts.
"But I thought we weren't - "
"We're not taking the train," I said. "This is just a shortcut."
"A shortcut?" he said, not quite believing.
"You can only get what you want underground, Mozzy. But believe me, you'll love the way it tastes."
He blinked, then nodded. I smiled, covering my eyes as I pulled him down into the fluorescent lights, his pulse fluttering under my fingers.
Every step we took, the pull was getting stronger.
Moz could sense it too, as if its influence traveled through my skin and into his, an electric current of desire. Or maybe he could smell it on me - here underground I felt myself glowing with it, the beast inside me doing back flips, screaming that it was almost loose. Whatever was down here had freed it from Luz's restraints. My tongue ran across my teeth uneasily.
Must... not... eat... Mozzy.
But I couldn't stop moving forward either.
Behind me Moz was panting, eyes glittering like wet glass. When I jumped down from the platform onto the empty subway tracks, he didn't say a word, just paused for a moment before following. His lips were full of blood, and I could see his heart racing in his throat. It was all I could do not to take him right there, but I knew it would only get better the farther down we went. I pulled him into the darkness of the tunnel.
Gravel crunched under our feet, and the skitters and smells of tiny things were all around us. My friends, my family.
Then a shiver traveled up into my toes... danger.
Moz pulled me to a stop. He'd felt it too. "Crap! Is that a train?"
I knelt, put one hand on a rail.
"Watch out! That's - "
"Don't be scared, Moz." I pointed with my free hand. "That's the electric one. This one's just for listening..." The smooth, cold metal under my palm was trembling, but not with the approach of a train. Everything around us shivered: gravel, iron beams, the work lights hanging from their cords. The earth was shuddering in fear.
Calling me to the struggle - la lucha. Calling Moz too.
And suddenly I knew something that Luz's cures had hidden from me, something I'd only glimpsed in my songs. The thing underground, the thing that made the earth rumble, was our enemy.
The beast inside me had been created to fight it.
"We have to be careful. It's close."
He sucked in deep breaths through his nose. "I've heard this, Min, at practice. It's in your music."
"Clever Mozzy."
He shook his head. "But how come it has a... smell?"
I shrugged. "Because it has a body. It's real and dangerous. And I don't think we want to meet it just yet, so shush." I dragged him farther into the tunnel, toward the trail that the old enemy had left behind - the perfect place to quicken the beast inside me.
As we grew nearer, I felt the rest of Luz's restraints stripped away, the lures and tangles and spores of the beast spilling through my system. Finally I understood how it worked. Down here, the beast inside me didn't want to eat Mozzy, it wanted to spread itself.
The old enemy somehow made it... horny.
Here was the hole, chewed and broken earth, like a wound in the side of the man-made tunnel, stained with the black stuff the enemy used to melt the earth. The ancient enemy was huge, I realized now, big enough to make its own tunnels, though it loved the subway's free ride.
I dragged Moz into the gashed stone of its trail, pushed him against the crumbling edge, easily holding his shoulders in a grip he couldn't break.
His pupils were as big as starless skies. "Min..."
"Shhh." I put one ear against the tunnel wall and listened... The enemy was drifting away, my bad hunger growing as its influence faded. My teeth wanted to pull Moz to pieces, to sate my hunger in a way no chicken blood could touch...
"I need to give it to you now," I said.
"But what - "
"Mozzy..." I put my hand over his mouth. "Here's the thing: if we stand here talking, I think I'll eat you."
His eyes wide, he nodded.
Pulling away my hand, I leaned forward, my mouth covering his, and the beast exploded. It struggled to filter through my skin, trying to wring itself out every pore, squeezing itself into my sweat and spit and blood, saturating every drop of me.
Infecting Moz, injecting him.
The kiss took long seconds, and when it was over I was dripping.
I pushed myself back from Moz and stared into his glittering eyes. He was panting, beautiful, infected. Relief swept through me, and I kissed him softer this time, finally certain that he was safe. Just this once, sane had beaten crazy.
After that first kiss, the hungry beast inside me didn't want to consume this new warrior in the struggle. It was satisfied.
But me... I was only getting started.
17. FOREIGN OBJECTS
- PEARL-
I'd bought a new dress just for this, and nine kinds of makeup. My hair had been redone that afternoon, cut and blown and sculpted with goo. I was dripping borrowed bling and staring at my bathroom mirror, a contact lens balanced on the tip of my finger.
Color my mother ecstatic.
"You can do it, Pearl." She was hovering behind me, similarly glammed.
"That's not the question." I stared at the contact lens, which shimmered like a tiny bowl of light. A dreadful, painful glow. "The question is whether I want to."
"Don't be silly, darling. You said you wanted to look your best tonight."
"Mmm." Foolish words that had sent Mom into a spending rampage.
Back a million years ago when she was seventeen, she'd actually had a coming-out party, like a real old-fashioned debutante. She still had the pictures. And we'd stayed in New York City no matter how high the garbage got, no matter how dangerous the streets - because this was where the parties were. So she probably hoped this was the beginning of a new era of Pretty Pearl, no more blue jeans or glasses or bands.
"I could just go there blind."
"Nonsense. To be truly lovely, one must make eye contact. And I don't want you stumbling all over the art."
"She's a photographer, Mom. Photos are traditionally hung on the wall; you can't stumble on them." Typical. It was my mother who always got invited to these things, but she never bothered to Google the artist. Which was lucky, I guess. A glance would have revealed who else was on the guest list tonight, giving away the real reason I wanted to go.