Authors: Shannon McKenna
Miles looked from Nina to Aaro. “Is this some obscure joke?”
“Fucked if it is,” Aaro said.
“What Aaro is trying to tell you is that we’ve already exchanged our vows,” Nina explained.
Miles frowned. “So you’re engaged?”
“No.” Aaro’s voice was hard. “Married. If we say we are, we are. Just because we haven’t got a stamped document in tripli-cate registered at the right public offices means shit. Everything I’ve accomplished in my life, I did without permission. If you ask, they say no. So don’t ask.”
Miles grunted. “Bet you asked her.” He jerked his chin at Nina.
“Uh . . . yeah,” Aaro admitted.
“Yeah,” Miles echoed bitterly. “Yeah. Nice work if you can get it, dude. Good on you. Congratulations and good luck and family values and all that great stuff. I wish you both the best. I really do.”
“Shit,” Aaro muttered. “Didn’t mean to rub it in.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Miles said wearily.
There was a pained silence. Nina piped up. “Excuse me?”
“Miles has women troubles,” Aaro explained.
Miles looked at Nina. “My girlfriend ran off with a rock star.”
She winced. “Oh. That sucks, Miles.”
“It’s OK,” he said. “You guys are keeping me too busy to dwell on it. Speaking of which.” He dragged forward the rolling lug-gage rack, and pulled off garment bags, tossing them onto one of the beds. “Here are the tuxes. Your dress, shoes, and whatnot, courtesy of Lily and Zia Rosa. And your swag from the Walgreens pharmacy.” He hoisted a bag. “Hair clippers, shaving stuff, makeup, hairpins. Some rhinestone bling for you, and some guns for him.” He hauled a hard-case suitcase off the rack, shoved the trolley out into the hall, and let the room door swing to. “Guess we should get ready for the party, right?”
Nina and Aaro gave each other significant looks. “There’s something we need to talk about before we go,” Nina said.
Her cautious tone tickled Miles’s weirdness antennae. “Yeah?”
“You know how I was injected with this drug, right?” Nina asked.
“Of course,” Miles replied. “You need the B dose, right?”
“Right,” Nina said. “We haven’t discussed the effects of the drug.”
Miles blew out a breath. “Don’t dole it out to me in dribs and drabs. That drives me bugfuck.”
She nodded. “OK,” she said. “It turned me into a telepath.”
Miles was speechless for a minute. “And, uh . . . you haven’t told anybody about this yet . . . exactly why?”
“I couldn’t face seeing that look that’s on your face right now,”
she said quietly. “Like I’m about to metamorphose into a giant housefly.”
He held up his hands, defensive. “Hey. If you knew how much dumb, lame, X-rated crap goes on in a guy’s head—”
“I do know,” she assured him. “I do. And I don’t care. Everybody’s mind is full of dumb garbage, Miles. Mine, too. I don’t judge.”
“Besides, this isn’t about you,” Aaro said, his voice cutting.
“Like we have time to care about the garbage in your head?”
“Ouch. Back off, man.” Miles turned to Nina, who was at least being polite. “So how telepathic are you, anyway?”
“I don’t have anything to compare myself to. Try me. Think of something specific, a visual image. And if you want to make it easy for me, make it one with a strong emotion attached.”
That was when he fucked up. There were only two emotionally charged images on top of his mind, and once he’d nixed the mutilated body of Joseph Kirk, only one other thing popped up, like a jack-in-the-box. So poor, unsuspecting Nina got the full whammy. Not only high-definition sexual images, but all his ex-istential angst on top of it. To say nothing of jealousy, anger, and hurt. The meaninglessness of his entire existence. How fucking stupid he felt.
She jerked back, with a gasp, like she’d been struck. “Ouch,”
she said. “Oh, Jesus, Miles.”
“What did you show her?” Aaro turned to him, outraged.
“I’m sorry,” Miles said. “I swear, I didn’t mean to do that. I was just scrambling not to visualize Joseph Kirk, and this other thing was just, uh . . . just sitting there.”
“What?” Aaro roared. “What other thing?”
“Cindy and her rock star,” Miles confessed, abashed. “Sorry.”
“Oh, Christ, Miles, did you have to inflict that on her? Was that necessary?” Aaro scolded. “You mean, them having sex?”
“That wasn’t what bothered me,” Nina said gently. “It was just very intense. Your feelings. I wasn’t prepared.”
“Sorry,” Miles said again, miserably.
“Me, too,” Nina whispered. “About all of it. Really.”
Aaro paced between them. “Anyway, Miles. You have to process this fast. Get comfortable with it right now. Like, instantly.”
Miles nodded. “OK. I’m good with weird. Hell. I hang out with McClouds. I’ve had full immersion training in weird. No problem.”
“That’s good,” Nina said. “Because last night, the guys who caught up with us shot up Aaro with the same drug they gave me.”
Miles turned to Aaro, his skin crawling. “Don’t tell me you’re a telepath, too, man. Because that would seriously creep me out.”
Aaro looked betrayed. “You said you were good with weird!”
“Not that weird,” he replied. “I have my limits.”
“I’m not a telepath,” Aaro snarled. “So chill out. In me, the stuff played out sort of, uh, differently.”
“What?” Miles started to twitch. “Go on! Hit me! Stop being coy!”
“Coercion,” Nina said. “He changes your mind for you. By force.”
Miles gaped for a moment, and started to laugh.
“What’s so goddamn funny?” Aaro demanded.
Miles shook his head, wheezing. “Coercion? You? Oh, man.
That is just so fucking redundant, it kills me.” He looked up at Nina. “I get it, now. So that’s how you persuaded her to marry you.”
“Shut up, Miles,” Aaro said.
“Make me, dude,” Miles said, wiping tears from his eyes.
“You can, right? Show me how this works. Go on, I’m not scared.”
“Don’t tempt me,” Aaro grated.
“Shut up!” Nina scolded. “We don’t have time for this!”
Miles wrenched himself under control. “OK,” he said. “Coercion. Telepathy. The attack of the mutant freak trio. The mind reader, the strong-arm, and the tech geek.”
“But the people we’re liable to meet in there?” Aaro said.
“They can make your brains leak out your ears without even touching you.”
Miles was sobered. “That is fucked up.”
“Right,” Nina agreed. “You need to learn to block them. So while we’re getting ready, think of a shield image that works, as your personal analog. I use a wall of static, sort of like white noise. Aaro uses a bank vault. Come up with something that res-onates for you. It’s late, to try something like this, but it might give you more protection. If it works.”
“OK,” he said, bemused.
He set his brain to work on that problem. Aaro disappeared into the bathroom. They heard the snarl of hair clippers. Nina laid the outfit Lily had mandated upon the bed, and the underwear that came with it. Miles actually had to look away. Black, sheer, bustier, garters, wow.
The dress was slinky, stretchy, glittering red fabric with a deeply flared skirt that belled out into layered ripples like a flower. Strapless.
Nina held it up, dismayed. “How the hell will this thing stay on?”
“Cindy had one like that,” Miles offered. “It stayed on fine, if you didn’t, you know, mess with it.” He started to blush, at her raised eyebrow. “It’s true. And Cindy doesn’t even have the, uh, assets to prop it up like you do.”
Damn.
Dig himself in a little deeper, why didn’t he.
“Where the hell do you get off gawking at my wife’s assets?”
They turned at Aaro’s voice, and gasped.
He’d shorn his hair off, military style. Miles would never have described anything about the guy as soft, but he realized now that the long hair had actually softened him. Without it, he looked hard, mean, seriously badass. Cheekbones that sliced, a nose like a scimitar, and those eyes, whoa. Miles hoped the tux would sweeten him up, or they weren’t going to get through the door. Fifteen grand or no fifteen grand.
“Good God, Aaro,” Nina murmured.
“What?” he snapped, defensive. “What else could I do? It looked like rats on crack have been chewing on the back of my head! It’s that horrible? A lot of guys buzz their hair off!”
“Well, yes. But they don’t look like you,” Nina said. “I thought we were trying to be, er, unnoticeable. That haircut, well. It’s memorable.”
He glanced at her dress. “Well, once you prop your tits up in that bustier and put the red dress on, you can kiss unnoticeable good-bye.”
“So what you’re saying is, my tits can get us all killed?”
“Can’t imagine dying for a finer cause,” Aaro said nobly.
Nina did not appear to appreciate the sentiment. “Why couldn’t it have been a basic black sheath?” she moaned.
“We can’t fix it now,” Aaro said. “We’re already late. Get dressed.” He fixed Miles with a slit-eyed gaze. “In the bathroom.”
And he’d thought the guy had been tough to swallow before he found true love. Jeez.
He and Aaro got to work putting on their holsters and tuxes, and loading as much weaponry into them as the specially tailored garments would allow. Aaro seemed happy with the SIG Sauer Miles had brought for him, and the Ruger six-shot for backup.
The bow tie civilized Aaro a little, but a dress military uniform would have looked more appropriate. And the bruises didn’t help.
The bathroom door opened. The room got real quiet.
Nina looked amazing. She’d done some magic with her makeup that made the bruises vanish, and her face was a flawless ivory pale, eyes smoky, lips like berries. Wow. She’d put her glasses back on. Amazingly, they did not detract. They sassed it up, like the lemon rind in the espresso, the wasabi on the sushi.
She’d swept up her hair into a pouffy, femmy updo. Lily had in-cluded a glittery shrug, which covered the scratches on her shoulders and arms. The pendant and dangly earrings Miles had grabbed off the display kiosk at the Walgreens checkout counter looked like fucking Cartier. The gravity-defying tits should be registered as lethal weapons. And they held the dress up just fine.
Miles wrenched his gaze away before Aaro caught him slobbering, but he needn’t have bothered. Aaro was in rapt contemplation of his bride. “What, should I go wait in the lobby?” he asked plaintively.
“No time.” Nina looked them over with approval. “You gentle -
men look wonderful. One last detail for you, Aaro.” She came toward him clutching a handful of little bottles and makeup sponges. “Your face.”
Aaro shrank back, horrified. “Me? No fucking way!”
“Don’t be stupid. If there’s one thing I learned at my mother’s knee, it’s how to cover bruises with makeup. Now sit, and don’t move a muscle. I don’t want to smear your tux.”
He sat down, muttering, but he let her dab and sponge at him.
She took her time, and when she was done, Miles was impressed.
The bruises were gone, and it looked natural. “A person would only notice if she was going to tongue-kiss you,” he told Aaro.
“So you’re good.”
Aaro checked himself out in the room mirror, but his ferocious scowl smoothed out as he looked himself over.
Nina turned to him. “So, Miles? What’s your analog?”
“An encrypted, password-protected computer,” he said promptly.
Nina blinked. “Ah. And the password? If I need to contact you?”
Miles fidgeted nervously. “You can do that?”
“I have no idea. Won’t know till I try, right?”
Miles shrugged. “The password is LARA all caps, hashtag, star, exclamation point, my great-aunt Barbara’s zip code in California, hashtag, KIRK all caps, and two question marks.”
“You have got to be kidding,” Nina said, dismayed.
Aaro snickered. “The nerd’s revenge.”
“You said these guys can drain my brain out my ears!” Miles protested. “What did you want me to put? My dog’s name?”
Nina sighed. “Could you write it down, at least?”
“It’s lazy and dumb to write down passwords,” Miles said.
“It’s dumber to die screaming because you made up one too complicated to remember,” Aaro commented.
Miles grabbed hotel stationery. He wrote his password along the top, tore it off, and handed it to Nina. She studied it, tucked it between her tits. Into that shadowy cleavage that looked oh, so velvety soft.
There was a moment of profound quiet.
“Uh . . . wow,” Miles said, remembering that Nina read minds.
The bodacious cleavage had made him totally forget that detail.
Shit.
“Shut up, Miles,” Aaro snapped.
“Could we just go, now?” Miles said plaintively. “Before I piss you off again?”
They made haste to do exactly that.
Dmitri was in a good mood by the time he cruised into Spruce Ridge. Playing with the new toy in his mind was more fun than he’d ever had. The applications became more vast with every use of his new trick. At the Outback Steakhouse, he’d had some fun with the blonde in the booth behind him. The bitch found a big shiny cockroach in her Caeser salad, trundling around on the romaine and the croutons. She’d run screaming out of the restaurant. He was still laughing. Uppity hag.
It had been fun to put one over on that doll-like cashier, too.
She’d be getting it up the ass from her manager tonight when it came time to count her till, being as how he’d paid for his forty-dollar meal with a one-dollar bill. The cashier had seen a hundred, and given him a wad of change. Yeah, life was going to cost a lot less for him from now on. Not that he was hurting for money.
But still. But still.
But the absolute best joke was on that long-haul trucker, the jowly asshole who’d flipped him off at the freeway exit. He’d followed the guy’s rig for a half hour, waiting for his moment. The truck was going fifty-five, and Dmitri blocked the pass lane until the line of cars behind them was long, dense, and impatient.
Then, with a surge of gas, he’d pulled up alongside and given the driver the finger before he jammed the image deep into the guy’s mind . . .
. . . four-year-old blond girl in her nightgown, barefoot, forty feet
ahead of the truck, right in his lane. Holding a teddy bear.