Chapter 1
Chapter
One
SHARD
“Smells like fart in here,” Rooney announces after kicking open the backstage door. He inhales deeply, wrinkles his nose, and gags in quite the exaggerated fashion.
Lounging on the couch in my best approximation of a confident sprawl, I stroke the twink in my lap from the top of his curly blond head to the flat planes of his bottom.
Previous to taking this form, reconnaissance indicated the value of having a significant object to attract attention.
It’s an exercise in exceptional patience waiting for Rooney to question my appearance, but I’ve existed long enough to know stalking up and demanding engagement is not the way to draw someone’s interest.
That’s alright. I can be plenty interesting.
One of Rooney’s fellow dancers parries, “It didn’t smell bad before you arrived.”
Rooney rolls his eyes, then slides out of his long leather jacket and tosses it on the couch without sparing me a glance, even though it clips my lap ornament’s shoulder. Frustration has me digging my fingertips into his thigh, but he remains sitting placidly, eyes trained on Rooney, as mine are.
The slender man doesn’t yet notice our combined stare. No preservation instincts, this one. A jewel like Rooney should protect himself aggressively, but a week spent learning everything about him from the mold in his fridge down to his molecular makeup has taught me the concept is foreign to him.
Admittedly, that recklessness is one of many elements that draw me to him.
Rooney whips off the t-shirt he was wearing under his jacket and tosses it in the opposite direction, at the ledge beneath a wall-length mirror. It hits the surface, then falls to the floor. He sniffs under his arm, then shrugs. “My moped broke down again, so I had to walk.”
Frowning at my oversight, I project a sliver of my consciousness through a crack in the ceiling, navigating the streets to Rooney’s crumbling apartment building in an urgent slither.
While I’m usually proactive about warding unnecessary inconveniences from Rooney’s dogged shamble toward survival, my earlier focus was spent on launching my plan to secure his desire.
I make a note to improve my skill at splitting focal points—something I’ve never had to worry about before, but Rooney is a special case.
When I’d secretly embedded a small opal of my being in the nape of his neck, I hadn’t been prepared for the sheer volume of risk-taking behavior.
Walking through this decrepit city with no protection is but one in a long, long line of ways in which Rooney is careless about safety, as if he has no regard for his own life.
One day he will be ready to accept my protection, but to make that happen, first he needs to know me. But I won’t have the chance if serious harm comes to him first.
Working to keep my eye on the changing room while my consciousness approaches Rooney’s chained-up moped, I select a knowledgeable soul fragment from my collection, directing it to worm inside the mechanisms. The machine is run-down offal, but while I would like to make it entirely new, he’ll certainly notice the unprecedented appearance of a different vehicle.
Instead, I rewind the machine’s guts until they’re as fresh as the day of their manufacture, strengthening the rusty chain affixing it to the bike rack as well.
That handled, I return my full attention to the scene in front of me. Rooney has taken several steps away from the sour dancer, dismissing her as a threat by showing his back. “Whatever, Sara,” he’s saying. “Your pussy definitely stinks. Can’t say the same about mine.”
A few of the other performers titter.
Sara’s retort is outraged, but Rooney raises his voice over hers, adding, “Maybe it wouldn’t if you stopped using those scented douche kits that throw off your pH!” His cheeks flush, olivine skin going rosy.
Unwilling to watch my jewel descend into further distress, I decide to act.
My prop stands, tossing his blond curls and heading toward the studio exit.
I steer him just enough to the left that his shoulder bumps Rooney on the way out; he doesn’t turn at Rooney’s cry of incredulity, simply continuing on.
The moment he’s through the door I dissolve him, eradicating the soulshard I used to create the puppet.
Rooney storms after him, seeking on a confrontation he won’t receive.
“Where the fuck did that little faggot go?” After looking around and finding nothing, he returns to the gaggle of unsettled dancers and snarls, “Who even was that?”
Nova, the mature woman whose name I know because she demanded I identify myself before I could enter the changing studio, tips her head in my direction.
I train my lips into a smirk—not a smile—in time for the impact of Rooney’s gaze, hazel eyes landing on me with the thunk of twin blades.
I’d hoped he’d be less agitated upon meeting me—in my current form, at least—but I can’t object to the display.
Rooney wears rage like a cloak of peacock feathers.
“And who are you?” he demands.
“Shard,” I answer, letting the word hang suspended between us, watching his features twitch with irritation when I don’t elaborate. Mostly because I don’t have anything else to say—I’ve never remained in proximity of a human long enough to need more of a name.
“He bought the club,” Nova informs him.
Rooney balks. “George dipped? But this shithole was his baby.”
Don’t I know it. It took more than a few layers before the former owner lost enough of his soul to no longer care about the strip club he founded—named Caution, aptly—but I was determined to have it, and rewarded the old man generously for his sacrifice.
Perhaps I’ll give it back someday, though I can’t say the same for the fragments of his soul I had to consume.
They felt greasy, but interesting enough.
Rooney eyes me with open suspicion, taking in my crisp pinstripe suit and backswept dark hair.
My hewn jewel likes put-together men, as great a contrast from himself as he can find.
I made myself in that image, different from the petite redhead I’d been when we met.
He’d kissed me in the darkness of the dance floor, letting me ride his fishnet-clad thigh until desire was a knot in my throat, but had declined my offer to go further.
The flicker of a taste was enough to claim me irrevocably.
I needed to know more about him, the man with a loud laugh and crass tongue, who scowled when unwarranted and snorted in amusement at my pout when he turned me down.
He was gentle, at least. Not quite kind, but not cruel either.
You’re not my type, he had explained without apology.
I couldn’t tell him I’d never had to worry about being someone’s “type” until this exact moment.
Sampling human life—their culture, their experiences, their souls—is how I chart my continued existence in this dimension, but I’d never latched on to someone teeth-first, prepared to die rather than unlock my jaw.
I’d been ready to beg for another kiss, the opportunity to press my chest to his and feel his fever-bright soul pulse like whalesong.
Instead, he’d kissed my forehead, the brush of lips an indelible signature, a brand.
Although he melted into the crowd after that, I maintained awareness of his movements until he reached the heavy door marking the exit, and in a moment of liquid desperation, I fractured.
Myself. It was different from chipping shards from a human’s soul.
I wrenched free a substantial piece of my being—messily and not enough, but the seconds were too thin—and smoothed its jagged edges with the molten-need subsuming my core before burying it under his skin.
I’ve been desperate for more ever since, seeking a way to put myself in his path again. The problem remains that Rooney is flightier than a strutting cockerel, phasing through a tangled network of parties and men and drugs, never lingering in anyone’s grasp.
Rooney props his fists on his hips. “What’s someone like you buyin’ a club like this for?”
I laugh, not meaning to be cruel or condescending, but I close my lips around the sound in fear of it coming across as such. “I’ve a soft spot for the ramshackle,” I explain, cryptic enough to knot Rooney’s brows inward.
“Gonna price us out of it,” Sara says like bitter pith.
“He’d better fuckin’ not!” Rooney speaks with the bravado of a powerless man who has nothing to lose, commanding without even addressing me properly.
Such bold confidence is intoxicating. My primordial nature begs for a more intimate taste, but I beat it down viciously, silencing the urge. Unlike my own, the bladed edges of Rooney’s soul are far too precious to risk dulling, no matter how careful my excision would be.
Lifting my hands in easy surrender, I say, “I have no intentions of firing anyone.” And I don’t intend to keep Caution either; I’m only here as long as it takes for Rooney to welcome me into the gaps. No cost is too great.
“We open in fifteen minutes,” Nova says, disrupting our staredown.
Rooney redirects his attention, leaving a gaping wound in its absence.
I grind my teeth with the effort it takes to hold back, but hold back I do, settling for watching the swoop of his spine as he shucks his pants and boots.
He’s wearing sinfully tiny shorts underneath, so tight they expose the bulge of his little cock.
After tying his long hair and pushing his bangs back with a headband, Rooney dusts his face with iridescent highlight powder and smears shimmering oil from his neck down, leaving him fragrant and glistening.
The concealer he paints over the scars beneath his pectorals makes me frown; he shouldn’t have to hide his seams.
Once painted, he removes a roll of caution tape from his bag and wraps it messily around his hips, securing it with a gummy substance that he bitches about liberally during application.
He loops it over one shoulder like a philosopher, then finishes with a pair of neon yellow platform heels.
At the end, Rooney blooms, not a flower but a stem of poisonous mycelium: bright, brilliant.
Dangerous.
I’ve seen Rooney dance before: once from the audience with physical eyes, before becoming frustrated with their limited scope.
The next night, I put myself into his muscles, feeling him flex and twist as if he was an extension of my own being.
Inhabiting his body should have been enough.
Far beyond the simplicity of human sex rituals, entering someone is the greatest form of intimacy I know outside of consumption, but as I refused to take from Rooney, even that proximity only left me wanting.
I need more than his spectral presence, which could be taken without his knowledge—I need Rooney to give himself to me.
So I wait, and I watch, standing behind the raggedy curtain, a backstage hoverfly.
Rooney flirts and smirks and grinds, scaling the spinning pole mounted on a circular platform, central to the dark room, connected to the main stage by a worn catwalk.
Desperate men crowd the sides, thrusting sweaty bills at Rooney, begging for even a flicker of his attention.
I know what it’s like to be desperate for him, in ways these men could never imagine.
So I watch, and I wait.