to make up for the bleak reality.
She opened her eyes, pushing the fantasies away as headache threatened again, and she saw a girl walking up the hill toward them. Tall glossy boots covered her legs almost to her short black skirt, but at the top—just below the hem of the sheer black skirt—pale white skin interrupted the darkness of the sleek vinyl and silk skirt. “Gory! You left the party before we got there. I told you I wanted to see you tonight.”
Gregory looked over his shoulder. “Nikki. Kind of busy here.”
Undeterred, Nikki hopped up onto the gravestone beside Eliana’s head and peered down at them. “So what’s your name?”
“El … Eliana.”
“Sorry, El,” Gregory murmured. He moved a little to the side, propped himself up on one arm, and smiled at Nikki. “Could we catch you later?”
“But I’m here now.” Nikki kicked her feet and stared at Eliana.
Eliana blinked, trying to focus her eyes. It wasn’t working: the wingless angel looked like it was on a different mausoleum now. She looked away from it to stare at Gregory. “My head hurts again, Gory.”
“Shh, El. It’s okay.” He brushed a hand over her hair and then glared at Nikki. “You need to take a walk.”
“But I had a question for Elly.” Nikki hopped down to stand beside them. “Are you and Gory in love, Elly dear? Is Gory that special someone you’d die for?”
Eliana wasn’t sure who the girl was, but she was too out of it to lie. “No.”
“El …” Gregory rolled back over so he was on top of her. His eyes were widened in what looked like genuine shock.
Nikki flung a leg over Gregory so she was straddling both Gregory and Eliana; she leaned down to look into Eliana’s eyes. “Have you already met someone new then? Someone who you dream—”
“Nicole, stop it,” another voice said.
For a strange moment, Eliana thought it was the wingless angel on the crypt. She wanted to look, but Nikki reached down and forced Eliana to look only at her.
“Do stone angels usually speak?” Eliana whispered.
“Poor Gory.” Nikki shook her head—and then pressed herself against Gregory. “To die for a girl who doesn’t even think you’re special. It’s sad, really.”
He started to try to buck her off. “That’s not funn—”
Nikki pushed herself tighter to his back. “You seem like a nice guy, and I wanted your last minutes to be special, Gory. Really, I did, but”—she reached down and slashed open Gregory’s throat with a short blade—“you talk too much.”
Blood sprayed over Eliana, over the grass, and over Nikki.
And then Nikki leaned down and sank her teeth into the already bleeding flesh of Gregory’s neck.
Gregory arched and twisted, trying to get free, trying to escape, but Nikki was on his back, swallowing his blood and pressing him against Eliana.
Eliana started to scream, but Nikki covered her mouth and nose. “Shut up, Elly.”
And Eliana couldn’t move, couldn’t turn her head, couldn’t breathe. She stared up at Nikki, who licked Gregory’s blood from her lips, as the pressure in her chest increased. She tried to move her legs, still pinned under Gregory’s body; she grabbed Nikki’s wrists ineffectually. She scratched and batted at Nikki as everything went dark, as Nikki suffocated her.
Graveyard soil filled Eliana’s mouth, and a damp sensation was all over her. She opened her eyes, blinked a few times, and spit out the dirt. That was as much as she could manage for the moment. Her body felt different: her nerves sent messages too fast, her tongue and nose drawing more flavors in with each breath than she could identify, and breathing itself wasn’t the same. She stopped breathing, waiting for tightness in her chest, gasping, something. It didn’t come. Breathing was a function of tasting the air, not inflating her lungs. Carefully, she turned her head to the side.
She wasn’t in the same spot, but the same wingless angel stood atop a gravestone watching her.
He was alive. He looked down at her with shadow-dark eyes, and she wondered how she’d mistaken him for a sculpture. Because I couldn’t see this clearly … or smell … or hear. She swallowed audibly, as she realized what she didn’t hear: the angel who had watched her die wasn’t alive either.
She swiped a hand over her eyes, brushing something sticky from her eyelids. Not too many hours ago—she thought—she’d coated her lashes in heavy mascara and outlined her eyes in thick black liner. It wasn’t eyeliner that she smeared over her temple. No. The memory of Gregory’s blood all over her face came back in a rush.
Eliana could hear the sounds of people walking outside the graveyard, could smell the peculiar cologne the crypt angel wore, could taste the lingering mustiness of the soil that she’d had in her mouth. And blood. Gregory’s blood was on her lips. Absently, she lifted her hand and licked the dirt-caked dried blood—and was neither disgusted nor upset by the flavor.
“Up.” A boot connected with her side.
Without looking, Eliana caught the boot. She felt slick vinyl over a toned leg. Holding the boot, she looked away from the crypt angel and stared at the boot’s owner.
“Nikki,” Eliana said. “You’re Nikki.”
“Nice catch.” Nikki crouched down. “Now get up.”
Eliana was sober now—or perhaps completely mad.
Her face was wet with blood and dirt, and she was lying in a mound of fresh soil. It wasn’t a hole. She hadn’t been buried in the ground. Instead, she was on her back on top of the ground.
Like I was when Nikki killed Gory … and me.
But the moonlight falling on Eliana’s soil-covered body felt like raw energy, pushing away all of her confusion, reforming her. It had saturated the soil in which she was lying, and the energy of the two pricked her skin like tiny teeth biting her all over. She wanted to stay there, soak in the moonlight and the soil, until everything made sense again.
“Get up.” Nikki tangled her fingers in Eliana’s hair and stood.
Eliana came to her feet, wishing she could stop or at least pause longer in the fresh-turned earth. At least the moonlight is still falling. It felt like a very light rain, tangible but too delicate to capture.
She stepped backward, and Nikki released her.
“You killed me,” Eliana said. It was not a question or an accusation but something between the two. Things felt uncertain; memory and reality and logic weren’t all coming together cohesively. “Suffocated me.”
“I did.” Nikki walked over and tugged open the door of the crypt where the angel had been perched. “Come, or you’ll go hungry.”
The angel from the crypt walked between Eliana and Nikki. “Kill her and be done with it, Nicole. These games grow
