The Blessed - By Tonya Hurley Page 0,86

they started floating down as if it were autumn—petals sprinkling over her naked body, adorning her hair.

“You are divine,” she heard him say.

She let out a sigh, closed her eyes, and let the petals float down onto her statuesque body. She glowed in the night, next to the black patent-leather-looking water.

Her lips waited for his, so much so that she could feel it in her whole body. She ached for him.

Trembling.

I won’t hurt you.

She felt him. In every way.

Her spiritual lover.

She grabbed the back of his hair, which was her own.

Trying to get more of him. But the more she got, the more it wasn’t enough.

Her scars, now dripping blood into the water turned it red. The fish rose up and down into its warmth. Slowly.

She put pressure on her healed wrists to staunch the bleeding, but it flowed relentlessly. It was all out of her control.

She placed her lips on the wounds and began to softly move her tongue, stroking them. But the sickly sweet smell of roses emulating from them was too much to swallow. It was so strong that she was sure it would wake up her mother inside the house.

Once she relaxed, it felt good.

She was euphoric.

It had happened.

“Sebastian.”

“I know your weaknesses. I understand your mysteries.”

Agnes believed.

“I am with you always.”

She looked down at the black water and saw his reflection. “I recognize me in you.”

Agnes turned on her side, to face him.

“Each day I love you, I become more of myself.”

“That is what real love is.”

13 “Nature behaving badly,” Cecilia said, eyeing the piles of cicada shells covering the curbs.

Ever since the storm, Brooklyn had been afflicted by plagues of insects and even rodents. Drugstore chains had sold out of insect repellent. Talking heads blamed it all on standing pools of water that allowed mosquitoes and other bugs to breed in greater numbers, flooded basements, cellars, and subway tunnels that drove subterranean dwellers like rats and mice aboveground. The threat of disease was very real and growing.

Everyone was talking, blogging, and tweeting about the unnatural cicada cycle, which was in full force and being aggressively exploited by some local businesses. SHUT THE F*CK UP cicada T-shirts were made and sold and stir-fried cicada was being served as exotic cuisine in local restaurants. There were even cicada pops—carcasses, with their transparent, veiny wings and red eyes, frozen inside red lollies for the kids. It was all anyone could talk about after the tornado and the We’re Not in Brooklyn Anymore campaign.

Brooklynites had pretty much separated into two camps. It either all made sense as a precursor to the end of days—all these unnatural occurrences—or it was beneath their concern. Cecilia was in the second camp for the time being. She’d had her fill of apocalyptic thought unless it had to do with her own day-to-day survival. The only thing on her mind right then was getting a gig. She was desperate to get up on a stage, any stage, and to play plugged into some sort of amp. She had so much inside to get out, and it was the only way she knew how to do that. Her therapy. She took off across the Williamsburg Bridge for Alphabet City in a single-minded quest for a dive bar that would split the door charge with her.

The rumbling sound of cicada nearly shook the bridge as she crossed it, carrying her guitar. She might not have feared the clicking critters as a sign of the Armageddon, but for her it was disturbing on a much more personal level. As if Sebastian himself was shaking the truss work, reminding her of what she was trying so hard to forget. The storm. Him.

Once over the suspended span, she wandered through the Lower East Side up Ludlow Street toward the East Village before ducking into a small, dingy place on Avenue B. Somewhere she hadn’t been in a while, where her fans wouldn’t find her. They’d been texting and posting and wondering about her for days now, but she couldn’t bear to respond, to face them. If they found her, then fine, but she wasn’t going to make it easy.

Around there, club doors were frequently left open onto the street and you were just as likely to be playing in a place with power as not, which was more a function of the bar owners’ bad personal finances than bad weather. She walked purposefully past the door guy and directly up to the stage and sat down on the lip