Lone Werewolf Duology (bxb)

20. The Music Teacher

One.

Why did Sangha repeat herself? Volya had heard her the first time. He blinked away drowsiness, squinting through the red at the smudged, distorted faces on the other side. The mass holding him in its grip exhaled and pushed him up to the electric lights on the ceiling. His groggy mind churned: Sangha didn't repeat the count. This was the second count-down, after the experiment had concluded.

He floated to the top, arms outstretched, fingers reaching to the metal platform like a champion swimmer propels himself to the board. One touch, just one touch, is enough.

Strong hands clasped his wrists, jerking him farther upward. He slithered over the leap on his belly, hoping that he wouldn't catch anything below the waist on any imperfection in the metalwork.

The red mass gave one last push. The grip on his wrists didn't loosen, propelling him to standing. With a squelching sound, he was out—born again?—and nearly toppled into Liam.

"Dizzy?" Liam greeted him. He let go of his wrists, hung a towel around Volya's neck and threw his left arm behind Volya's shoulder-blades for support. The distance between their faces measured an inch at most. Volya was still in the nude, so this question oozed subtext.

Good Lord, that's enough oozing for one day.

Liam had two arms, so he cupped Volya's face with the right one. The warm fingers travelled along his jawbone, leaving his head emptier than a whistle.

"Liam, what are you—" The words came out as unintelligible gurgling between Volya's numb tongue and the mouthpiece still in his mouth.

"Shh." The perfect oval of Liam's fingernail hooked under the mask's rim. "Stop talking if you don't want your tongue pinched."

Volya wouldn't have minded his tongue pinched, not at all. Actually, now that Liam had mentioned it, he was intensely curious how it might feel, to have his tongue caught, just not by the alien-meets-jellyfish mask. By normal human flesh... say lips or a tongue.

The mask disengaged with a squelch. Because Volya's reflexes were impared, and Liam's hands uncharacteristically clumsy, it slipped between them, plopped down the platform, and bounced off the tank's rim songily. The dumb thing didn't use its tentacles to stick to the glass, so it plummet eight feet and hit the floor next to Sangha's shoes with a sickly splash a rotten watermelon makes under the tires of an eighteen-wheeler.

Liam tracked the mask's flight to its sad conclusion with some interest. "Let's get you down."

Yes, let's. Volya had no interest in repeating the mask's stunt. Also, he wanted his clothes back, the sooner the better. He dabbed his forehead and eyes with the end of the towel, because the unpleasant moist feeling clung to it. The terry cloth came off pristine white, so he checked himself, finding surprisingly few pieces of red gloop clinging to his chest hair and down his legs. He wiped it off, then rubbed his shoulders vigorously, trying to work a bit of warmth into his limbs and dried his feet. His knees shook a little, but he made it down without slipping off the ladder. He ducked behind the modesty screen to finish toweling himself off.

"After you've had your follow-up, drop by my room, okay?" Liam called, sliding down the ladder like it was a lift of some kind, his back to the tank, legs swinging through the air.

"Sheesh, Liam!" Did he have to spout double-entendres when Volya was attempting to zip up his pants with utmost dignity? Apparently, the only part of him that the sci-fi machinery activated was the one which didn't require any such sophisticated incentives to function. Getting a hug from Liam upon surfacing from the red goo did the trick.

"I... ah..." Liam pointedly stepped back behind the screen. A couple of seconds elapsed before he spoke up again. "I want to see where you're at with music."