Hotter Than Hell Page 5

  Unfortunately, he couldn’t hear her.

  When Tom wrapped one huge hand around his shoulder, crushing the elegant line of his suit, holding him effortlessly in place, he was too astonished even to shout. Demanding Tom listen to him, he grabbed the younger man’s wrist with both hands. Tom ignored both the words and the grip and removed both of Mike’s earplugs, one after the other.

  As the music changed again, Ali scooped the wax plug she’d taken from Tom off the floor, scrubbed it against her dress, and shoved it into her empty ear.

  Stepping back into sight of the stage, she raised a hand in farewell. NoMan’s audience had begun to move to the music and while she had no idea just where they’d be moving to, it really wasn’t something she needed to see.

  “Apparently, Michael Richter is taking a well-earned vacation in an undisclosed location, no one knows where Tom Hartmore is, two recording companies have filed for bankruptcy, one high-placed executive has given everything to charity, two more have turned themselves in for tax fraud, and there are at least three messy divorces happening in the industry between people who’ll be dividing acts with their assets.” Glen set the paper down on her desk and shook his head. “If Brandon and Travis are responsible…Are you sure you can control them?”

  “Not control, manage,” Ali reminded him. “Besides, they owe me.”

  “Speaking of.” He put one finger under her chin, and studied the burn across her cheek. “That looks like it’s healing well.”

  “Still hurts.”

  Green eyes crinkled at the corners as he grinned. “You need something to take your mind off it. Just say the word and I’ll break out the champers. Tell me that NoMan’s finally decided to sign with us.”

  “I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow? Why tomorrow?”

  “Because once they sign, they’re off limits and tonight I’ve been invited to a private concert.” Ali leaned back, tucked her hair behind her ears, and smiled. “They’ve promised me an audition I’ll never forget.”

  MINOTAUR IN STONE

  Marjorie M. Liu

  I DREAM OF THE MINOTAUR WHEN MY EYES ARE closed. I cannot see him, whole, just fragments: the cold hard sinew of his large hand, the corded muscle of a massive thigh. I glimpse, briefly, the line of a collarbone, the hollow of a straining throat; higher, the curve of a horn.

  Minotaur. Son of a wayward queen and a god.

  And he wants me to save his life.

  The first time I dream of the Minotaur I am curled in a nook on the basement level of the library, the third lowest floor, part of the catacomb, the labyrinth. It is very quiet, deathly so, almost midnight. Security guards roam high above. I do not fear their discovery. At night, they are too uneasy to trawl for bottom-dwellers in the underground shadows of the library’s belly. Spooks, ghosts, ax-murderers in the stacks; I have heard those men tell ridiculous stories.

  There is nothing to fear. Books are my friends, have always been my friends, and when I lived homeless on the street I learned to hide in the tall stacks, live in the shadows of musty corners, hidden by the illusion of intellectual preoccupation, studious charm. Now, barely in my twenties, it is a small thing in the evenings, after my tiny job at the library café, to make myself soft and invisible; to blend, to become, to live as an uninvited guest, quiet as a book—and as a book, a dull creature on the surface, but full of the raging wild dark inside the words of my heart.

  The café closes at eight. The library doors at nine. By ten, all the stragglers have been rounded up. Thirty minutes later the lights switch off. I know this routine, though I have never seen it. Every night, as soon as I leave the café, munching on some snack I am allowed to take free from the pastry display, I meander down the broad marble stairs, flowing with the public. One more stranger, a slip of a girl, moving neither fast nor slow, sometimes with a book in my free hand. Going places.

  People leave me. We part ways as I descend deep into the catacombs. Sometimes a crowd, then nothing at all. It is, I often think, like walking through a door no one else can see—a slipstream gate, from one world to the next—into a forest of stone and tile, where branches are straight as shelves, holding books and yellow brittle newspapers, aisles riding like paths into shadows, the illusion of endlessness, the maze, the winding circle.

  Occasionally I find another reader in the labyrinth, but no one lingers. There is a cold air, a sense of oppression. Eyes in the dark. It bothered me once, long ago, but I did not run. I read out loud instead, in a whisper to the darkness, until the cold air turned warm and those eyes lost their power to scare. So that now I pretend I have a friend, one friend, someone who welcomes me home.

  I hide my sleeping bag and backpack in the gap behind a row of crusty encyclopedias. The lights do not function in that particular aisle. I move by instinct and memory as I find my belongings and jiggle them free. There is a bathroom nearby. Ancient, also unlit, no door. The toilet works, as does the faucet. I keep a battery-operated lantern just inside, on the floor.

  I undress, folding my clothes, putting them aside. I toss my underwear in the sink, and then, cold and naked and barefoot on the ancient tile, I clean up. Wash my short hair under the faucet with cheap shampoo, savoring the chemical scent of lavender and jasmine. Run wet hands over the rest of my body, soaping up, rinsing as best I can. A puddle spreads around me.

  When I am done, I drape my wet body in a big floppy t-shirt. I wash and wring out my underwear. Hang the pair on the rim of a toilet stall, then take down another that has been drying there all day, and slip them on. It is an easy routine.

  On the night I dream of the Minotaur, I turn off the bathroom lantern and in pure darkness walk back to my sleeping bag. Air dries my body. I lie down, cradle my head on my arm, and close my eyes.

  I dream. I dream of a place I have never been, though in the way of dreams, it is familiar. There is sand underfoot and the air is warm and wet. I look up, searching for stars, but all I find is stone. Stone all around. I am in a box, and there is only one way out.

  So I take it. I walk across the sand to a door made of bone, smooth and pale and grinning with skulls; a warning, a promise, an invitation. One touch and my hand burns. I flinch, but do not turn away.

  I enter an oubliette. A place of forgetting, of never turning back. I know what that is. I know what it is to be forgotten.

  I stand just within the doorway of the void, and for the first time in my dream, feel fear. A terrible urgent despair, the kind that begs sound—a wail or cry or quick breath—because sound is life, sound means presence, and I could forget myself in this place. I think I already have.

  But just as I am about to retreat through the door of watching bones, I glimpse something in the void—a solid curving plane of gray. The round edge of a shoulder, perhaps, holding very still.

  “Hello?” My voice is soft. There is no answer, but in the silence I sense another kind of weight, a longing, familiar as the unseen eyes that watch me nightly from the shadows of the basement labyrinth. I cannot turn from that presence; as though a hand wraps around my body, I am drawn across the sand.

  I walk into darkness, blind. The shoulder I saw before disappears, but I continue on, helpless. Just a dream, I tell myself. Only a dream.

  Except, I can feel the grains of sand digging between my toes, and the air in my lungs is heavy and hot. I feel very much awake, very much alive.

  And suddenly I can see again. Not much, just that same sliver of gray; a shoulder, attached to a long muscular arm; higher still, the faint outline of a broad chest, a strong throat. All at a height much grander than my own. I am looking at a giant. A giant made of stone.

  I stand very still, staring; then slowly, carefully, reach out. I cannot explain my action. I must touch and be touched, though it is only rock beneath my hands. But I hesitate, at the last moment. I fear, irrationally, that I might be burned—and indeed I flinch as though harmed, because what my fingers find is not cold or stone, but flesh and warm.

>   I stagger, falling. A hand catches my waist, then my arm; in that grip, profound strength. Terror flutters my heart, freezing my voice. I think, dream, but I cannot wake no matter how loud I scream inside my mind.

  A rumble fills the darkness. I reach out. My palms press against yet more skin, a body trembling with sound. Like a thundercloud, sighing in the night. I try to see, but cannot. Try to free myself, and am held closer.

  “Let go,” I breathe, struggling.

  “No time,” whispers a low voice, rough and masculine. “Listen to me. Listen.”

  But he says nothing else and I gaze up and up, staring at shadows gathered around a curving line, hard and tipped and ridged. A horn. I can see nothing else. In the oubliette, where I should find only darkness, gasps of light are playing tricks.

  Something grazes my cheek; fingers, perhaps.

  “Tell me,” says the voice, quiet. “Tell me what you hear.”

  “You,” I whisper, my voice shaking on the word. “Only you.”

  I hear a sigh, another rumble that pushes through my body, settling around my heart. A sad sound, old and tired. Again, my cheek is touched. Fingers slide into my hair, warm and gentle. For a moment my breathing steadies and I can think again.

  A dream, I tell myself. Then, softly, “You are a dream.”

  “A dream,” murmurs the creature. “A dream, if I could so be. Your dream, better.”

  “My dream,” I say. “But you are.”

  “No,” breathes that low voice. “I am the Minotaur. And this is no dream.”

  The hand holding my arm slips away; the body beneath my palms follows. I am left standing alone in the darkness. I feel bereft, lost without that touch which so frightened me. I cannot explain it. I do not want to.

  “Soon,” rumbles the voice. “Soon, again.”

  “Wait,” I say, but the world falls away, the oubliette spinning fast into a jolt, a gasp—

  I wake up.

  A week passes before the Minotaur returns to me. I think of him often. Dream or not, I cannot help myself. I feel his fingers on my cheek as I pour coffee. I feel his body beneath my hands as I wrap scones in wax paper. I hear his voice inside my body as I count change for an old man in a suit. Everywhere, the Minotaur.

  And when I close my eyes for just one moment, I return to the oubliette, to the darkness filled with thunder, and feel him with me like a shadow pressed against my back, watching and waiting. The longer I wait, the more I want to be with him again. The more I want to understand.

  Some dream. I wonder if that is all it is. If there is more, and whether, like Ariadne with her ball of golden thread, I will be able to find my way home again the next time the Minotaur comes for me. And I know he will. I feel it, fear it—am even eager for it—though it sows discontent, unease. For the first time in a long while, I think about my life. Not about the things I do not have, but the people who are gone. Parents. Friends. I had them once, I think, but at some distant time so far past, such people seem more dream than the Minotaur.

  All I have is myself. All I need is myself.

  Until now.

  I follow my routine before bed. I must. Routine keeps me alive. But after stretching out inside my sleeping bag, I hesitate before closing my eyes. I can feel the library breathing around me; the labyrinth with its endless maze of books like a forest overhead. Wilderness bound, with my back against the ground. I search within my heart for the roots of the home I have made. Look deep inside, for comfort.

  I close my eyes and fall into sleep. Fall some more, into the oubliette.

  This time, there is no door of bones. Just the darkness and shreds of light, playing against muscles smooth and hard as stone. A dream, I tell myself, but this time I know it is a lie, though not how or why. Nor does it matter. I am here, standing in front of the Minotaur, and the air is hot and the sand is soft and I can feel sweat trickling between my breasts, above my pounding heart.

  “You came back,” says the Minotaur, as quiet as I remember, deep and rough and rumbling.

  “I didn’t think I had a choice.” I remember his touch, and stand very still.

  Shadows shift; light plays over a sinewy shoulder, the edge of a strong jaw. The Minotaur moves closer; a gliding motion, impossibly graceful. “There is always a choice. If you had fought me, in your heart, I would not have been strong enough to bring you here.”

  “Here,” I echo. “Where is here?”

  “It is a place with no name.” Closer still he moves; I imagine a growing heat in the air between us. “No name, ever. Only, we are at the heart of a maze, a house of halls and riddles. One way in, no way out.”

  The Minotaur does not stop moving. I steady myself, refusing to back away. I glimpse only fragments of his body, but that is enough. He is very large. I can see his horns.

  “What are you?” I whisper. The Minotaur stops, but not entirely. I stifle a gasp as he takes my hands, his fingers huge and strong. He gently, slowly, raises my arms. I almost resist, but I have been thinking of him all week—perhaps forever—and though I fear him, I have in my life feared more than the Minotaur, and I can suffer the unknown for my curiosity.

  “I am a man,” he says softly. “Though I have been made to live as a beast.”

  He places my hands upon his head. I close my eyes as he forces me to touch him, and I see with my palms a hard surface, unnatural.

  A helmet. A mask, even. Made of bone and steel and hide. A terrible thing; terrifying. I feel straps run down the sides, behind, all around, holding it in place. I cannot imagine wearing such a device.

  The Minotaur releases me, but I do not stop. I do not want to. My fingers explore and connect with flesh, a jaw, his lips. A flush steals through me. I pull away, but again the Minotaur catches my hands. His mouth moves against my fingers as he speaks. It feels like a kiss.

  “A moment,” he whispers, as his breath flows over my skin. “Just one moment, please.”

  I give him his moment. I cannot help myself. I feel in my own heart a pang of longing, a sympathetic echo, and it cuts. I live in my own oubliette, my own labyrinth. I am a forgotten woman, invisible as the Minotaur to eyes beyond this dream. I cannot remember being anything else. I cannot remember being held, ever.

  I rest my forehead against his broad chest, pressing close to stand between his feet, seeing him with my body, feeling him lean and strong. I listen to his breath catch, and inhale a scent of sand and rock and something sharper still.

  “I did not bring you here for this,” whispers the Minotaur.

  “I did not come here for this,” I reply. “I do not know why I am here.”

  “A selfish reason.” The Minotaur’s fingers tighten, briefly. “To save my life.”

  “I don’t save lives. I barely have my own.”

  “You live in darkness. Amongst the books. You go there in the night to hide.”

  “You’ve watched me.”

  “You know I have. You have felt me.”

  “Yes,” I breathe. I have felt him for a long time. My watcher, my only friend in the catacomb darkness, who has always felt more real than imagination should allow. Now, here in the flesh. Perhaps.

  The Minotaur loosens his hold, his hands sliding away even as my own fingers trail down his throat, soothing a path along his shoulders. His skin is warm. His hands are warm, as well. He touches me again, palms resting against my spine. I am wearing very little. As is he.

  I open my eyes and tilt back my head, trying to see the Minotaur. I cannot. The fleeting light is gone. His face is lost. I am afraid that I am lost, as well.

  “Why me?” I ask him. “Why?”

  The Minotaur stands very still. “Because you know this. You know this pain. You know what it is to have no one. To be…no one.”

  My heart hurts. “And so? Because of that you think I can help you?”

  “I hope,” he says simply. “I hope you will understand. I hope you will have compassion.”

  “No. This is not real.”

 
“It is real to me.” The Minotaur pulls me tight against him. “And I think it is real to you. More real than the life you have left behind.”

  It is true, but I will not say that. “And this? Your life?”

  “This is no life. Not here, in this place.”

  “You are confined?”

  “A prisoner.”

  “Why?”

  “For living. For breathing, for being. Much the same as you, I think.”

  “I’m not locked up.”

  “Are you not?” The Minotaur’s hands tighten against my back. “I think we are the same, you and I.”

  I close my eyes. “I am alone, that’s all.”

  “Alone,” he echoes. “This place would be sufficient, if I was not alone.”

  “So you brought me here to stay with you?”

  “No.” The Minotaur’s voice is rough. “No, I would not ask that of anyone. Only, there is a world beyond this darkness, and I would see it, find it, live within it.”

  “You might not like that world,” I tell him. “You might want to come back to this place after you’ve seen what you want.”

  “Like you?” says the Minotaur softly. It is impossible to know his meaning, to dare divine those two words. All I know is that I wish to echo them, to say, like you, or to add another word: I.

  I like you, I want to tell him. I do not know why, but I do. And I am crazy for it. All of this, crazy.

  But the Minotaur is right. He has chosen well. I understand him. Or at least, part of him. The rest is mystery. The rest is insanity.

  “I need to sit.” I slide out of the Minotaur’s arms to kneel unsteadily in the sand. The odd shadows of light are still gone; the darkness is profound. I cannot see myself. I am only voice, thought, sensation. But I feel the Minotaur crouch beside me, and savor the contact of his knee against my thigh, the heat of his sigh. Touch is a lifeline in this place. A reminder.

  “How long have you been here?” I wonder if I could survive in the oubliette, alone.