‘And sometimes conspiracy theory nutcases are right,’ Kira told the night sky.
She tilted her prosthetic back and forth. The moon was a giant half-ball of silver light, but the armadillo didn’t give a fuck. When light hit the metal it kind of soaked in, dulling down to something insipid and barely there at all. Like a five-fingered black hole. Her heart was made of the same stuff. The chunk of metal in her chest didn’t beat, didn’t flutter, didn’t race. Brilliant as they all may be—Blake and her little extra-terrestrial friends—they were also assholes. They had tech that had guided them all the way from their universe to this pissy one, yet they couldn’t come up with a way to make her heart beat? Even if it was pretend? And what was with the no fingernails on the armadillo? Smooth nubs. Just bloody creepy.
Sure, Blake had put fingernails into the faux skin she wanted Kira to wear over the prosthetic, but there was as much chance of Kira wearing that fucking awful sheath as there was of her getting to the gym this week. Or of Blake actually calling to see how the hell her sister was.
Kira fixed her eyes on the stars overhead. One in particular, a bright little splat directly above them. The rest of the universe rotated around it in a slow, torturous circle. She braced against the back of a faded chaise lounge, determined to keep looking. Something about the wide-open space, the endlessness overhead, never failed to give her the feels. If she could, she’d jump into that nothingness and let it take her. Let it swamp her, suck her down into the black hole that was already a part of her. The one she should have stayed in after the car crash.
Sangria and whisky hit the back of her throat in treacherous unison, and there was no stopping the evacuation this time. Deep red vomit made preschooler paintings on the concrete. Wiping her mouth, Kira sighed.
‘Such a waste.’ She straightened, throat tingling with the sting of bile. ‘Okay, let’s do this. Perry is going to shit kittens if I don’t help out. K, you’ve totes got this.’
And after three attempts at the door-handle, she did. Stairs were trickier. Who the fuck put oil on these bastards? The music from the pub made the wooden stairwell vibrate, meaning no one heard her screech when the third step from the bottom rose up and slapped her on the ass. Kira punched it, metal on wood. No contest. The step suffered the loss of a chunk, splinters spiking out like broken bone. With the pain receptors on her prosthetic set to their lowest level, Kira grinned and gave the nasty woodwork a one-fingered salute. The music shut off at the same moment.
‘Kira, are you okay? Where are your shoes?’
Kira jerked, her spine slamming against the next step up. ‘Fuck, Perry, you trying to make me piss my pants?’
The man standing over her rolled his eyes. ‘You handle that quite well on your own. Thanks for covering the shift for me, silly cow.’
His accent was god damn heavenly, rising up and down like one of those pretty wooden ponies on a carousel.
‘I was just coming to take over,’ she said.
‘The bar just closed.’
‘Why did you close it so early?’
‘Oh bloody hell, Kira.’ Perry sighed, but there was a flash of pearly whites. Kira pursed her lips, moved in for a kiss, but Perry screwed up his face. ‘Shit, you stink. Kira, listen to me.’
‘No. I own more shares in this place than you do, so shut your pretty mouth.’
‘Bitch.’ More pearly whites, bright as a damn supernova. The dude needed to ease up on the whitening treatments.
‘Don’t you forget it,’ Kira said. ‘Talk to me, P-man. Tell me about rainbows and kittens.’
Sweetness and light were good. They chased back the darkness. Darkness sucked balls. Way down here, at the bottom of the bottle, it had a harder time reaching her, but she wasn’t always as invisible as she’d like. Perry gripped her hands, his slender fingers making hers look like chunky sausages.
‘K, I’ve got to tell you something and I don’t think you’re going to love it,’ Perry said.
Kira touched her flesh fingers to his sculpted beard. Jet-black bristles against fawn skin. Match made in heaven. ‘You’re pretty. I’m going to buy you a boyfriend.’
‘I know, you keep saying, but I can find my own. Thanks anyway.’ Perry swiped away another attempt to touch him. ‘K, focus. Rossiter called.’
This was one of those times when a heart would thump. ‘Why the fuck would He-Man do that?’
Built like a brick shithouse, Rossiter was Blake’s not-so-friendly bodyguard. Admittedly, the man was an impressive chunk of Samoan Canadian manhood, with an impossibly shiny bald head.
‘Blake wants you at the Facility,’ Perry said.
Wasted to sober in warp speed. She slumped against Perry, and her cheek found the solid warmth of his chest. Being a short-ass had its advantages sometimes. A resting place where she could gather thoughts that had just scattered like dropped marbles. Never huge on conversations, Blake had offered her nothing but a rare hello for near on twelve months, dropping even that for absolute silence since the whole Eron thing.
The Eron thing.
Seriously, what the hell was the big deal with taking an alien off-site? The dude was bored shitless in that place. If
