Part 22 (1/2)

Then his tongue resumed, a wet rouse where their lips conjoined, perfect union, his head giving her its ardency as he rhythmed there.

She glanced at Pim, who was getting off in that special way of hers. Pim looked like a soft pink dream without clothing. And her squirmsa”as Condor, intimately lip-zipped, lapped hera”seemed to say, Robe me in all the world's wonders, wash me in sunlight, let perfect ecstasy swallow me up.

Altoona stretched her right hand toward her girlfriend and Pim seized it in that sweet grip.

Life radiated upon her oval face.

This moment felt like a pinnacle of bliss, which surely it was. Yet it was the beginning of something even greater.

Oh, Jesus.

Her kneeling boy-lover, with his lashable back, killer tush, and steely smile, swept her up into a yummy rhythm. Her joy began to rise again. ”That,” she said to Blayne. ”Yes, that.”

Pim's right hand was stroking Condor's hair. ”Honey, he's so good,” she said to Altoona, almost as if her new boyfriend wasn't there, almost as if he were a trained monkey that couldn't understand. ”His mouth is so f.u.c.king incredi . . . mmmm . . . oh, yeah!”

Altoona winced. She nodded, unable to speak one word as the tremors seized her. Her hips swayed as Blayne's head moved in perfect harmony. Their blent love surged upward.

Then a hand appeared on Pim's head, grasping her hair and yanking back so hard that her neck made a snapping sound. A blade came across the arched skin, opened up a red blurt-and-spill down the curve of her body and a cascade of blood onto Condor's side-turned head.

A face emerged.

It came toward her.

Blayne struggled below, panic in his eye.

The hand came in rough and scrabbly at her head, her hair, hanks yanked back, a crude tug that wrenched a neck muscle.

Just as the face registered with her, the name rus.h.i.+ng in, a tautness bloomed in her throat, too fast for her hands to avert it, then a hot outgush along her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and belly, cooling as it came, and no-breath, nothing, nothingness closed upon her.

13. Unearned Sighs of Relief.

Kyla followed Patrice into the gym.

For maybe ten token minutes, they had half-heartedly searched for their cla.s.smates' corpses. To h.e.l.l with school spirit. Then they headed back to the gym to wait for the bodies to be found and brought in.

A bridge had been crossed.

Kyla saw it in the teachers' faces and in the way the chaperones looked at everybody.

Though the grown-ups remained aloof, a new bond, a bond of adulthood, had begun to form between them and the returning survivors.

Mostly, Kyla didn't feel grown up.

But an essential part of her did.

On the bandstand, riding above soft cymbal brus.h.i.+ngs and steady ba.s.s drum thumps, Jiminy Jones noodled ineptly on his downturned muted trumpet. He had one of those bulb-mutes in, the kind that laced his playing with silvery silken regret and caresses that zinged straight to the heart.

”Oh, Kyla,” whined Patrice.

Kyla followed her lover's eyes.

She wasn't looking at Pesky and Flense, their bodies lying there like broken dolls beneath the Ice Ghoul's triumphant leer. Nor was she wasting time on the princ.i.p.al, who stood by Miss Phipps holding his speech notes, pale and really upset about something.

No.

Patrice's eyes were trained on Fido Jenner. One hand was stuck in his pants pocket. In the other, he held a paper cup.

Bowser stood beside him.

They were grinning.

Why? Because that slim tramp Peach, Cobra's girla”or from the look of it, Cobra's ex-girla”was talking them up, fondling their friends.h.i.+p lobes, hipping and breasting and just generally slinking outrageously before them.

”He's breaking my heart,” Patrice went on.

”You can't push the river, sweetie,” Kyla said, trying to be as gentle as she could. ”If it wants to flow toward us, it will. Besides, he'd have to break up with Bowser, if we were to have a prayer.”

Or she and Patrice would have to break up, but Kyla didn't mention that.

Petulant: ”Bowser McPhee isn't worthy of Fido. He never has been. And he never will be. It looks to me like Peach is doing one heck of a job pus.h.i.+ng her river.”

Kyla stopped feeding her whining girlfriend. She was feeling jubilant as all get-out. There they were, numbered among the survivors!

Too bad about Pesky.

Too bad about Flense.

But the important thing was that she and Patrice had made it. They were alive and free, a rush of exhilaration coursing through her.

Odd, how you could be shackled and never know it till someone took a sledgehammer to your bonds and set you free.

”I could use some food.”

”Get some for me too, okay?” Patrice said, dole-eyed above sultry trumpet sorrow. ”I don't want to go near him.”

”Sure.”

Kyla headed off.

Patrice was a tad bit irritating. Kyla had heard that all sorts of splits and new pairings, and sometimes the beginning of threesomes, were often precipitated by surviving the kill.

That was what Fido seemed to be engaged in.

And Peach's scuzzy boyfriend, Cobra, was hip-deep in conversation witha”of all peoplea”Sandy Gunderloy and Rocky Stark. He was staring at the cheerleader's b.r.e.a.s.t.s, pretending he wasn't upset at Peach's having deserted him.

The creep was miffed though, powerful miffed. Kyla could tell.