The Fly House (The UtopYA Collection) Read online

  She watched his every move. He nearly fell on her as she licked her lips.

  "Why did you need to see me?" he asked.

  "I was coming to see Diem, but I just realized, that you are even better than Diem."

  He was almost undone by the curve her mouth made, forming the word you. She smiled and his hips unconsciously pressed toward her. He adjusted his stance so as not to offend. It would be misery if she stomped off when all he wanted was to stand there and breathe her in. No, that was not all. But that was a very nice, very socially respectable start, considering what he had in mind for her. At the very least, it would probably not send her screaming off to hide in the spindlings.

  "I am good for what?" he asked weakly. He kept himself from telling her exactly what he'd be good for at this very moment by swallowing hard. He was proud of the incredible restraint he demonstrated while waiting for her answer.

  "You are good for me," she said. She dusted her finger along the hem of her skirt, raising it only slightly before a burst of Plutian mating lust pulsed from his chest. He could not cork it, could not stop himself from releasing it.

  The heady fireball throbbed from him like a drum beat. Once gone, it left behind the same sensation he'd experienced once before, while trying to birth some waste that was three times bigger than his elimination hole would allow.

  The relief of the energy passing from him was the same. He nearly dropped to his knees, but he raised his head to watch as it crossed the three feet between himself and Wind. Round and bright as the moon, it pulsed as if it were plugged into too high a voltage, illuminating their feet as it passed from him, into her.

  He let out a groan of pleasure as the surge of his passion sunk into her, how her face jolted from generic passion to fervent zeal. Her gasp was more true than ever he'd heard it, now both delicate and raw. Her head fell back, exposing her neck like an instrument to be played and Phuck reached for it. He felt her bones at the back and put his lips to the soft hollow in her collar.

  "How did you do that?" she gasped. He looked up into her eyes, and saw her sudden fever for him take hold. A fever brought on by his energy. He felt a thundering bolt of Plutian pride. She liked it so much, her leg twisted around his, her fingers slipping into the charred opening of his pants. She worked herself like a stringed toy against his leg.

  "It is how the Plutians mate," he said, but he doubted she heard him. He didn't even care. She gripped his urine straw, kneading it with the most delicious pressure. Her breath was hot against his neck.

  "Do that to me again," she panted, writhing against him. "Do it now."

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  August 9, 2095

  Maeve didn't care if it meant starving; she was sick of eggs. But all the hoarded food she'd stocked in her room was gone and now she was at the mercy of the eggs. One more omelet and her taste buds would fall out. She rifled Supply again, even though she knew it had already been thoroughly combed by the other thirty-eight Archive occupants. The only thing left were the dragonflies that had suddenly appeared, rising up in colorful, annoying clouds. Maeve swatted them away as she searched again, fantasizing about overlooked cans of pears. It was infuriating.

  Steven brought in a small pail of egg mixture as she slammed a cupboard hard enough to knock it off its hinges. The bucket sloshed as Steven lifted it onto the counter and Maeve's stomach did the same. That's the way they did it now. With 39 people now in the Archive facing starvation, no one was so afraid of the egg-dropping mother dinosaur that could be tunneling down on them anymore. It helped that there hadn't been any sign of the earthquakes Maeve witnessed. Casper theorized that the eggs were on a higher level of the Earth's crust and that they had dropped in a crevice during the quake. No one argued.

  Instead, the Archivers drilled holes in the eggs one at a time, and drained the contents into bucket after bucket, and, at first, they'd stored it in the Supply's cold room. It went bad in two days’ time. It was only after someone had mistakenly left a bucket out that Casper tested the mixture in the Archive lab and determined that some qualities of the egg made it not only resistant to bacteria, but better kept at room temperature or warmer.

  Maeve would rather eat earthworms.

  "You want some?" Steven asked, pointing to the eggs.

  "Nope."

  "You don't have to lift a finger; I'll make it for you."

  "Unless it's a steak, I'm good," she said. She shot him a grin. "But thanks."

  Steven warmed at her smile. He sidled closer, too close. Maeve felt his breath on her face. She refused to move away, but she turned her face to the side because even his breath smelled like eggs.

  "Let me feed you, Maeve. Let me take care of you," he begged. One hand found her hips and balanced hesitantly on the bone over her thigh. She reeled back, but only slightly, giving him a what-the-fuck cock of the lip.

  "Think, Steven. What did I tell you about this?"

  "What's wrong with being nice?"

  "Not nice, creepy. You're being creepy again. Hands off."

  "Well excuse me, for offering to be a gentleman."

  "Last chance to get your hands off," Maeve said and he removed them, raising them in surrender. "Remember what happened last time you offered? Do you?"

  "I only touched your shoulder..."

  "My boob. That was my boob, Steven," Maeve's voice drifted off as she gave him another chance at telling the truth. She crossed her arms and tapped a toe against the floor.

  "I'm sorry," he said. His eyes grew wide and vulnerable. "But how do you do it? Aren't you lonely? Don't you want a man? A man to protect you..."

  Maeve folded her arms over her chest. "You asked me for a blow job."

  "Oh, well..." Steven chuffed. "You said you weren't a virgin."

  "Oh my god, Steven! It doesn't mean I'm a hooker!"

  "Look," he said, a finger in her face, "one of these days, you might change your mind and want a little of this and you know what, Miss High and Mighty? It's not going to happen. Simple as that. Not going to happen."

  "Swear on a Bible. Right now. Do it," she said as she walked away.

  "I'll still make you eggs..." he called after her. "We could eat in your room, if it makes you feel any better."

  "Nope!" she replied, but as she walked away, her stomach growled and she knew she had to do something to change that situation.

  ***

  Diem waited until Phuck was long gone before he whistled a low pitched, swizzle of a sound. His sheathen puffed a line of smoke toward the cave and the hens followed the line right back to it. When the last hen disappeared inside, Diem whistled again. This time, it was two sharp whistles that ended with a smile on his face.

  Forge shot into the air and soared back down, landing in front of him, with only a tremble to the ground. His sheathen never failed to amaze him with her incredible grace, especially since it didn't match her extraordinary size.

  "Up for a ride tonight?" he asked, and as if she understood, Forge dipped her head low. Diem yanked a guide rein from the hollow of the huge spindling tree, where he kept the rein hidden, and climbed onto Forge's neck to secure it. He fastened the rein, looping the thick braids, made of gorne stems, between the plates of his sheathen's neck and checked the steadfastness by tugging on the rein. It held, gripped by the barbed edges of the neck plates.

  Diem wound the loop of the rein around his left wrist, crazy-eighting it over his palm. It would be the only thing that held him to the dragon, if he were thrown. But he trusted that Forge would never throw him.

  "Ready, my girl?" he said. He squeezed the muscles of her neck between his thighs and lay his chest down against the plates as Forge snorted a flash of flame. It was the only warning she would give.

  She pushed off the Earth so hard, the ground shook. Diem's hair flattened against his head as the Dragon sped straight up, into the sky. He held tight with his powerful thighs and nudged back on the rein, to remind the dragon not to go too high. He didn't want to have to explain himself to Ph
uck. The Plutian could not understand riding a dragon for the joy of it.

  But Diem understood it completely.

  Diem guided Forge with combinations of knee pressure and tugs on the rein, in the opposite direction from that which Phuck had trudged away. The two sped through the night sky, the moon reflecting like milky diamonds in Forge's plates as they drank in the evening air.

  Diem pushed one knee and the opposite foot against the dragon's neck. Forge didn't breathe a puff of smoke as they passed soundlessly near Fly House. Instead, she banked left, as Diem's guidance commanded, before passing over it and giving away their flight with even the blanket of a shadow.

  ***

  Maeve walked away from the suites. She walked past the common rooms, with only a few people lounging around in them. Scott and Jess, Kate and Vance (all four, wedding bands, hidden in their clothing); Vanessa (metal bra clasp, totally accidental, as she reminded everyone sixty times a day that she doesn't want to be here); David (retirement cuff link, secreted away who knows where); Maureen, Haley, and Isabella (charms, removed from necklaces and hidden in their underwear); Phillip (a Centurion credit card, which he stuck to the skin of his ribs, and that he showed to everyone who would look).

  The talk of food drafted into the hall as Maeve passed them. Vanessa was giving a bitterly detailed recipe of a chocolate cake she was sure to never have again. Phillip was trying to guilt Andrea into giving him a scrounged can of beans she bragged about having in her suite.

  Maeve couldn't keep going like this, eating eggs every day and thinking that her only prospects for the future would be from this pool. Creepaholic Steve-O, Nearly Dead Dave, or Phil the Centurion. Or Casper. There were a few more to choose from, but none that Maeve would ever choose.

  To get her mind off it all, Maeve decided to make her rounds. Casper had given her the codes, so she spent half of each day walking to check the other outer doors they'd found and the egg room, to see if anything had changed. At first, she'd looked forward to it, but now, after how many times of checking, and the doors never saying anything different, and the egg room looking exactly the same, aside from the growing swarm of dragonflies, checking had become a compulsion as much as anything else. The first day she'd decided not to check, she spent the whole afternoon irritable and jumpy, until she finally gave in and did the rounds. The second time she decided to skip was the same way. There hadn't been a third time.

  She rounded corner after corner, skittering her flashlight beam over the floor. Every once in a while a chamber bug shot out of a shadow and even though it startled her every time, Maeve loved the shot of adrenaline that came with it. At least when she was scared, she felt alive.

  The first set of doors were in the part of the Archive that Casper believed was finished right after he joined what he now called "the experiment." It gritted Maeve every time he did. What she had bought into wasn't supposed to be an experiment, it was supposed to be a sure thing. Well, maybe not foolproof. There was a risk, but the Archive was supposed to be a helluva lot more calculated than throwing darts while wearing a blindfold. It didn't seem like that anymore.

  Maeve punched the code into the first set of doors and the readout spit out the same old story. The second set of doors, just beyond the room where they drained the eggs, was the same. She ducked her head into the egg room before leaving, without a clue as to why she was even bothering. She liked to think that one of these times, some carrots would fall into the earthquake crevice. Or a grocery store.

  It was a little different than the last time she'd looked. There was still some egg goop on the floor and the dragonflies huddled in it. Casper had concluded that the dragonflies performed like ants.

  Amber and Amy had returned from the second draining, covered in egg, since the flow had been much faster than predicted. They'd cleaned up most of the mess, but there was still a sheen to the floor. The eggs had also dropped down much further. Still suspended from the ceiling, they weren't just large rings in the ceiling now. They were fat ovals that would stand as tall as Maeve's waist.

  Nearly Dead Dave, who used to own a construction company, took it upon himself to assess the structural soundness before jamming the ice pick into the bottom of the egg as Steve-O had done. While Steve, Amber and Amy stood coated in egg goop, Nearly Dead Dave had insisted that side shunts would be the way to go. He also explained, while ushering the twins out of the egg stream, how the eggs were unstable in the soil overhead, and could drop at any moment and crush whoever stood beneath them. It didn't go unnoticed, how Nearly Dead Dave had left Steve-O standing beneath the squirting egg.

  But, as Maeve stepped into the egg room, it seemed like the eggs tilted overhead. She froze, catching her breath, as she caught sight of a thin beam of someone else's flashlight, just beyond the last egg. The beam was pointing at the back wall and swayed from sight behind the movement of the eggs.

  "Hello?" Maeve swung her own beam off the floor and toward the other. The stream of her light hit the eggs and flashed over an egg that had fallen on the floor. If someone was back there, they weren't answering.

  "Who's here? Anybody?" Maeve asked. There was no answer aside from the soft spray of soil that sprinkled down from the ceiling. Everyone had agreed to take a buddy when going to the egg room, for exactly this reason, but it's not like anyone did. Now, some dumbass was in here either playing hide-and-seek or caught beneath the dropped egg and Maeve was about to follow suit. The beam flickered on the back wall as the eggs continued to wiggle like loose teeth.

  "Oh, what the hell..."

  She took another step into the room and the beam of light flickered again. She didn't want to go back there, but damn. There was an egg laying on the floor and if somebody was stuck under it, she'd have to help.

  The smartest way was to stick to the walls, but a dropping, rolling egg could easily crush her legs or her head or whatever it fell on. Still, she clung to the walls, and scooted her way around the perimeter, toward the beam of light.

  Half way around, the ceiling quivered and Maeve was pounded with a dirt and pebble hailstorm as one of the eggs sank further down between the girders. She shone her beam up at the egg closest to her. It swayed in its hole, but the one beside it had a dingy, horizontal stripe of dirt around it, gauging the four or five inches it had dropped. Maeve crept on. She wasn't going to just stand there and wait for the thing to fall.

  Her fingers pressed hard against the grit of the wall and she felt the tremble before the oh shit even made it through her mind. The walls quivered and then the whole ceiling shook. The girders wobbled. Maeve pressed her body flat to the wall as two eggs fell and rolled toward the door. The first slammed into the door with a thwomp and the second knocked into the first. It sounded like billiard balls, cracking together on a giant's pool table.

  Frozen, Maeve aimed her light on the eggs.

  "Shit," she said. There was no way out the door now. Whoever was stuck under the egg at the back of the room might be stuck for a while longer. They both might. She just hoped that whoever had the other flashlight wasn't dead.

  She gulped, clinging closer to the wall as she continued toward the light. The eggs in the ceiling swung. As Maeve grew closer to the fallen egg, she realized two things.

  First, no one was trapped.

  Second, the light wasn't from a flashlight beam.

  The light was a pale blue and it wasn't cast from a torch, but from the hole where the fallen egg had been. It was just a peek of light, finger-sized maybe, punched through the dirt overhead, but there it was. Maeve scooted around to the back wall, positioning herself in a direct line with the beam. She inspected it like a lost animal, moving around it, studying it, dipping a finger hesitantly into its glow.

  It was moonlight, she was sure of it. Her first thought was to shriek and run back to the others in the Archive and tell them to come see it, until she glanced at the eggs wedged up against the door. And those still swaying in the ceiling.

  Maeve stared up again at the tiny
hole in the ceiling. She breathed in deep and didn't drop dead from it. The oxygen didn't kill her as the sealed outer doors warned it might. She even gave her lungs an extra minute to seize up, just to be sure that some poisonous gases didn't need an extra moment. Nothing. She was fine.

  She sucked in another deep breath. Maybe it was all in her head, but she was sure it smelled like real, honest-to-God air. A whiff of the most beautiful oxygen perfume, bottled up in this stale room. She breathed in fully again, soaking her lungs in it. Her back hit the wall.

  A sudden quiver from the wall went up her spine. But this time, the tremble in the soil didn't linger. Instead, it exploded into a quake that shook the metal beams like a hungry gold miner's pan.

  Maeve screamed as the soil ceiling rained down on her in big chunks that got caught in her hair. The quake moved through the walls and into the floor, cycling around her feet. It shot up through her soles and into her spine as if she were some messed up lightening rod. Maeve screamed again as a layer of gravel pelted down. She hid her head beneath her arms so the sharp rocks wouldn't cut her face. The gravel poured down into the room and she was sure she was going to be buried in it.

  But the flow halted, leaving her knee-deep in tiny pebbles.

  Maeve peeked out from beneath her elbow. The hole in the ceiling was now about the size of a manhole cover and the gravel covered the fallen egg. And one of the other eggs was laying on top of the heap.

  Maeve glanced back at where the door had been and wasn't anymore. It was covered in gravel too. There was no way out and no way in now but one. Maeve gazed at the egg on top of the gravel and hoped she could get her footing enough to climb on top of it.

  But the fucking eggs kept wobbling. The gravel held the eggs in place, but it kept shifting. The eggs jiggled like surf boards. Maeve stuck her hands straight out at her sides, hoping to God she wouldn't fall off. If she did, she might sink into the massive pile of gravel and she wasn't sure she would be able to make it out of that.