There was so many bad things that happened IMMEDIATELY after quitting the day job, so it’s been hard to not think the universe is telling me this is a very bad idea. Thankfully I have had so freaking many of you remind me that ‘correlation does not equal causation’ and I think it is starting to sink in. (a little bit)
Enough about me, today I want to bring you a story that I FUCKING LOVE by an author who I FUCKING ADORE. Myra Danvers released her new story and it is absolutely everything! Get ready, because you are going to love these psychotic characters.
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Delirium
“We’ll never be done, you and I.” He pushed off her desk. Closed the distance between them with prowling steps, clenched fists, and oh, so much determination. “Too much unfinished business to ever call it over.” He stopped a few steps away from uncomfortably close. Braced his palm on the wall behind her head, forearm brushing the side of her throat. “’Sides”—he licked his lips, glanced down her shirt—“we never got our hate fuck, baby girl.”
Iris knows he’ll come.
He’ll come lookin’ for what she stole, what she refused to give up when everything went to hell.
Won’t find it, of course.
There’s nothing left but a pipe full o’the good stuff and the dregs of the past that refuse to die.
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Excerpt
Something cold slithered into Iris’ guts. Something that tasted a lot like Big Evil’s charred, yet somehow undercooked skin, but she didn’t bother to squash it—even when it wriggled and wormed. No, she left it to marinate in the festering stew of everything else she’d refused to deal with or acknowledge over the years. That’s what antacids were for.
“So,” she asked, and took another drag because goddamnit, how? She could feel Death lurking in her peripherals even now, after number Six had done its damnedest to keep her heart functioning at full capacity. And yet Big Evil survived in spite of her calculations and obsessive planning? Survived being left in the detached cargo hold, floating without breathable oxygen in temperatures well below freezing? “That human cockroach can endure anything, apparently,” she grumbled, stretching out her dead fingers. “Just my luck, he’s probably immortal, and I’ll never be free of that stain. But you can’t be sure of anything until we’ve launched his still-breathin’ body into the deep.”
“I said no, Iris.”
“What’s the issue? You’ve stooped low enough to breed a roost of vultures, Mister Morals—a little cold-blooded murder won’t tip the scales much at this point. Hell,” she continued, “it’s not even murder, really. I did most of the killing. I’ll even push the button for you, baby. But I’ll be a rotting corpse before I share air with him again.” Daxx grinned. Sucking his teeth. “Poetic, but dead bodies don’t need air, pet.”
“Apparently that one does,” she returned, flinging her ruined hand in the direction of The Seeker’s cargo floating a few thousand klicks away—in the general direction of one still-breathin’ corpse. “Launch him into the ether before he gets the chance to get a little stab happy.”
“‘Big Evil’ is a man in high demand, which means I’ll be collectin’ him from the cargo hold before he dies, pet.” For a moment, he fiddled with her make-shift pipe, then tossed it aside, and said, “Now come. You’ve got a date with the detox fairy.”
“Well, that’s a poor choice,” she said, but allowed him to pull her from the pilot’s chair in spite of the burns and the slippery, slimy feet squelching in her boots. “Sober Iris isn’t half the Mech I am.” “Think I’ll take my chances, thanks.” The lane boss snorted, guiding her aft, toward The Seeker’s back exit. The rest of his ragtag crew followed along without being told, all obedient n’shit. Iris shrugged. “Whatever tickles your taint, Daxx.” And then, because she needed Daxx to know exactly how serious she was about turning The Seeker into an untouched mausoleum dedicated to no other but her, she said, “Seeker? Initiate protocol Tangerine Dream.”
In response, The Seeker’s dash flashed with a flood of orange light. Glowing in spurts between bright and almost black, her words plunged Daxx’s crew into near-dark. Serenaded them all with the dull hum of The Seeker’s life support systems going offline and the hissssss of precious gases being jettisoned into the deep, all at once. But it was the inverted pop of her electromag shields shutting down that drew a furious curse from Daxx’s lips. “What the fuck, Iris?” the lane boss snapped, and jerked her through the exit hatch. “Couldn’t have waited for us to be gone before you shut her down? Fucking junkie!”
He had reason to fear, she’d give him that much. Without those shields, it wouldn’t be long before all manner of galactic cosmic radiation smashed into the squishy, delicate humans within.
Unraveling their DNA with gleeful abandon just to see what a sentient being might look like when reduced to nothing more than base elements. Grinning, even though she’d just destroyed her entire crop of opium, Iris stumbled along at his side. A wet noodle of perfect obedience. “Daxx, baby! Come on. I thought you were all about taking risks? What’s more thrilling than the very real threat of having your lungs turned inside out and crystallizing before your frozen eyeballs? Maybe the radiation will give you superpowers.”
He didn’t reply. Merely hustled her along behind his crew, shoving her faster than her blistered feet could keep up with. And when Iris stumbled—skinning her knees on The Seeker’s floor panels and bending one of those dead fingers about thirty degrees in the wrong direction—Daxx didn’t stop to ask after her health. He scooped her up with a burly arm around her ribs, and tossed her skinny junkie ass through the exit. She landed with skin-splitting force, but didn’t feel it through the haze. Knowing to enjoy that particular lack while she could. Knowing what was coming next.
But to watch the wall of freezing air chasing them from The Seeker’s belly wasn’t a sight she often got to enjoy, so there, on the floor of Daxx’s spiffy little scouting skiff, she watched. Hair pulled toward the vacuum sucking the life from The Seeker’s entrails, she watched, grinning that mad grin only an addict could pull off. Because, really. Most people didn’t get to see this more than just the once, as it usually preceded a horrific, suffocating death, given that most were too lazy or stupid to install the necessary fail safes.
Which wasn’t to say that she had created those necessities. Only that it was stupid to go without. When the last of the vultures had scrambled into the little scouting ship suckered onto The Seeker’s butt cheeks, Daxx slammed the door shut with plenty of time before the frost crackled through his hull.
The drama queen.
“Fuck,” he snapped, really biting that word in half before turning dark eyes down at her. “You,” he said, and closed the distance between them. Pulling her up by the lapels of her leather jacket. Making the seams bulge in protest, even if she didn’t. And then, with shaking hands, Daxx spun her, pressing her bruised, scarred cheek to a stack of frigid plastic storage bins. Wrenching first her left, then right arm behind her back no matter that bent finger or her failure to fight back, he kept her pinned with the weight of his body. With his groin and hip.
“Easy,” Iris rasped, teeth gnashing against the pain she shouldn’t be able to feel, but did. And when his elbow caught at one of those places number Six had told her qualified as a third degree burn, she couldn’t help the squawk of protest.
Daxx thumped her against the boxes. “Shut the fuck up. I’m more’n capable of finding something to gag you with.”
And then he snapped his fingers at one of his men and bound her wrists behind her back with what might have been a belt or several linked zip-ties. Wrenched so high, so tight, not even the opium could mask the pain. With a huff, he sat her in a jump seat beside the skiff’s only toilet, and took the spot opposite her. Planting his boot on her chest as he crossed burly arms. Glaring. Iris grinned, right knee bouncing.
“Nothing to say for that little stunt? You almost got us all killed, Iris. I’ll have to have the whole crew treated for radiation poisoning, and so help me, if even one of them dies…”
“Puhl-ease,” she drawled, trying to ease the strain on her shoulders, though it was largely impossible given the size thirteen boot planted on her sternum. “Vultures are easy to breed. You’ll have another crew in no time.”
Daxx didn’t so much as crack a smile, but one of the filthy scavengers did. “Not gonna be so high’n mighty when she’s servicin’ the whole crew. Gonna enjoy makin’ her cry. Gonna enjoy planting a few vultures in her belly after that comment. And that stunt. She can be our little breeder…”
“Aren’t you a charmer,” Iris said, eyes flicking over his crisp uniform. Pegging him as an officer, though that rank was sorely misplaced amongst vultures.
“What’s your name, sweetness?” The nameless one frowned, taken aback. “Why?”
“I’m a sucker for propriety. ‘Specially when I’m planning to unleash something naughty. Target needs a name, baby.”
Daxx snorted. “She’s my property until I say otherwise,” he said, cutting them off, not bothering to remove his boot from her chest, or allow her to name the man who wanted to breed her. The lane boss merely watched her as the skiff kicked off. Dragging The Seeker’s dead weight toward his ship. Slow and lazy.
“That’s mighty unfair of you,” the unnamed vulture said, eyes sticking on the bare skin of her thighs. The way her ratty boxer-shorts sagged and hinted at what might lie in shadows. “Don’t see why she can’t take a few cocks and work for you at the same time. Her holes are separate from her brain, aren’t they?”
Accustomed to such blustery nonsense, Iris yawned. Jaw cracking. Eyes watering. Body aching.
“What makes you think I want to share with you, Shantz?” Daxx smirked, tipping his head back as they made their lumbering progress. “I’ve got plans for the girl.”
Unimpressed, she let the opium close her eyes. Rolling Shantz’s name around her tongue, just to get the feel for it.
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This last weekend involved a very significant amount of alcohol, hanging with some friends, getting authorlandia stuff done, and I am actually starting to feel better now. ‘Inheritance’ even has THE END typed out, I have done a read-through and am working on some edits! Let’s hope I can get this done so I can get it out to you, I can see the end in sight lovelies!
Until then, grab ‘Delirium’ because it is just amazing and enjoy the very twisted sci-fi trip!
Amazon: 1-Click Now!
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Want more of Myra Danvers?
Raised by her awesome parents in Canada’s snowy north, Myra learned perseverance from an early age. She learned to speak in third person, via extensive reading as a child, because… well… Northern Canada gets a LOT of snow. And when one isn’t snowboarding, building quinzees, or waking up to teddy bears frozen to the floor, one tends to read about places that are warm–even if being cold is preferable to being hot, every-damn-time.
All that reading gave Myra the gypsy bug. So, after college, (where she majored in professional gypsying) she moved to a ski resort in British Colombia to be a ski bum and chase the winter, because the cold was in her bones and it never bothered her anyway. (Points because Elsa of Frozen is her spirit animal?)
But then life caught up with her, as it does, and now she’s stuffed full of enough life experience to write until transcendence (where she will be first in line to get a sweet android body and travel the universe until the end of time). So that’s what she does, when she’s not listening to the voices or taking apart the electronics just to see their insides.
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