"I just love Gregorian chant accompanied by theremin and TB-303, don't you? And that brings us to the midway point of the 1 AM block here on WMFO, your Raft on the sea of sound. As always, I'm Ellie with the Flipside, and after these words from fine establishments near campus, we'll be back with an experimental jazz rendition of a real-life numbers station. Stay tuned."
Daria shifted the pizza box to her left arm so that she could wave through the window with her right. Ellie slid off her headphones, tousled her hair—blonde, with scattered locks dyed electric blue and candy-apple red—and rose to let her in.
"One stuffed crust to specifications, from the place that is not not obviously a Mafia front."
"Enter, please."
Daria set the pizza box on the largest empty space she could find near Ellie's DJ station. Ellie picked her black vinyl purse off the floor and started rooting around in it. "Did you start ripping CD's in the music library like I suggested?"
"Every time I can get there before closing."
"And what did you think of Varèse?"
"A bit too self-consciously experimental for my taste. Which is odd, seeing as I've been on a Steve Reich kick."
"It's gonna rain men, Hallelujah, it's gonna rain men, Hallelujah... Aha! All for you, my baby queer." She plucked a pair of concert tickets from her bag and held them out to Daria. "Two tickets for World Hatchery, this very Friday at Studio Kenmore. Glowstick Juice are opening for them. Should have a good beat that you can dance to. And I am officially your lifesaver."
Daria took the tickets. Reading over the details printed on them, she mumbled, "Or my undeath-saver." She looked up. "Ah, seems more fitting for those of us up at this hour."
"Not wrong," Ellie said, and returned to her desk. "Go and be with her, and/or be her."
As Daria departed, Ellie continued: "Welcome back, friends in frequency. You're listening to WMFO, and I am Ellie on the Flipside. Before the break, I promised you a jazz performance of a numbers station, and I'm going to deliver. After that, stay tuned for dedications, including a special number that is going all the way out to a girl at Boston Fine Arts College...."
For both bands of the night, dancing involved a lot of head-rolling, and arm-waving, and jumping up and down in place. Jane had, in the course of getting here, accumulated a half-dozen glow sticks, a chain of conjoined toy snakes that she wore like a boa, not to mention a costume bowler hat with a long ostrich feather. She jumped with the best of them, and hollered approval for each new track, and was having a grand time. During slower songs, she would stand behind Daria, drape her arms over Daria's shoulders and sway-nuzzle Daria's hair. When the BPM kicked back up again—
"This is what they call grinding, Daria! Isn't it better than the word sounds?!"
The spotlights spun and the colors changed and the crowd surged and pulsed.
Getting parched, thought Jane. Need a water or a grape electrolyte drank or anything.
"Will do," said Daria.
She had bitten Jane a dozen times, sucked her down to unconsciousness once. Jane still wasn't entirely used to Daria being able to tune into her thoughts, but to be fair, Daria was not that accustomed to using that ability, even on strangers, let alone the girl she loved.
Slight touches of inhuman strength and agility were useful for a diminutive college student trying to cross a club dance floor. She noted the gaps as they formed, and she slipped through them with an ease she could never have managed a year before. At the bar, she bought a bottle of water and another of an electrolyte liquid whose flavor was named for a primary color. Then, back through the crowd.
"You have a feather in your cap!" So said the woman dancing beside Jane, a brunette not quite of Jane's height, wearing costume angel wings.
"I'm a trend-setter!"
"Would you like to see my vulva?"
Well, this was new.
Jane leaned towards the woman's ear. "Shouldn't I buy you dinner first?"
Angel Wings laughed. Still bobbing to the beat, she held up the charm on her necklace.
Jane brought a glow stick up close to see it better. "Very nice! Where do you get a thing like that?!"
Daria refrained from laying on the super-speed to reach Jane's side. Jane paused her bouncing, took the bottle of industrial electrolyte solution and slammed back several gulps' worth. She wiped her mouth with the back of the hand that held the bottle cap. "Thanks."
"Uh-oh," asked Angel Wings, "am I interrupting something?"
Jane leaned towards her ear again. "Only because this is a very special night!" She caught Daria's eye as she took another gulp from the bottle.
Daria's mind reached out. Very special?
Jane took her by the hand and dismissed Angel Wings with a smile and a cheerful wave, but with an air of finality. Tonight's the night you fuck me like the dyke slut I am.
Daria blinked.
"Whooooo!" yelled Jane with the rest of the crowd as World Hatchery announced the next song. Or was that not your plan?
Daria pulled Jane into a kiss that prompted a few "whooo"s of encouragement in their immediate vicinity. Follow me.
Daria led them through the crowd and the lights and the sweat and the noise. Down the side hall, to the bathroom door, where they caught each other in a spinning kiss as they tumbled through the swinging portal. Daria felt through Jane's heat to the momentary emptiness around them, wrapped herself tightly around Jane and disregarded gravity.
Jane brushed into the drop ceiling first, pushed at it with the heel of her hand, and they were through into the crawlspace. Daria shoved the panel mostly back into place with her boot and carried Jane to a wall, where the surface beneath them was solid.
They heard the bathroom door swing again and two, no, three people entered, giggling and loopy and about to do the same thing more mundanely in a toilet stall.
Daria straddled Jane and kissed her with reckless abandon.
Fuck, Daria—holy shit—
Daria moved her lips to Jane's ear. "New trick," she whispered. She held her hand over the collar of Jane's midnight-black shirt. The top button popped loose. "Would have figured you'd undo that one yourself," she whispered. "But now..." She rose from the horizontal and moved her hand down the centerline of Jane's chest, never touching. Each button came loose in turn, and Jane's bra unhooked.
Left hand now bunched in Jane's hair, right hand just nearly touching her belt buckle, Daria caressed with her thoughts. Inhumanly deft, would you say?
Jane's mind was collapsing into a jumble. Goddamn sure of—fuck, shit, fuck—sure of yourself—fuck, that's hot—sure of your—just do me!
One last exertion of psychokinesis, and then Daria's fingers were relentless.
Jane had been wound up with anticipation all night, the wild speculation of what might follow an actual date and the body-thumping beats and even the flirtation-for-fun with Angel Wings and Daria showing off her dark gifts over and over—
Perhaps Jane broke apart in five minutes. Perhaps it was a lifetime.
"Gonna have bruises," Jane said, happily, just loudly enough for vampire ears to hear it over the music echoing through the crawlspace.
Not done, Daria said inside Jane's mind.
"Oh... Oh! You didn't...?"
No.
"Please, let me..."
Second, you'll taste what you're thinking of. But first, this.
Daria pulled off her own shirt and shivered with the extension of willpower that discarded her bra.
She traced the index fingernail of her right hand between her breasts. A thin rivulet of blood followed.
Jane's legs were almost numb and useless. Somehow Daria floated back and brought her forward, and Daria was cradling her head, guiding it down to her skin, to the incision in her skin. And then her mouth was upon the wound, and her human physiology had no choice but to seek oxygen, and she swallowed.
* * *
Jane had to lean upon Daria on their way out of Studio Kenmore. She was missing about one step in every three, and she didn't feel like taking the trouble to make her eyes focus.
At the intersection, where the pedestrian-dominated road met a larger thoroughfare, Angel Wings was trying to introduce the gothette on her arm to her friends, while the whole group was simultaneously trying to climb into a cab while being a little drunk. She happened to look up as Daria and Jane passed. "Whoa. Looks like it was a very special night."
Jane held out a fist and solemnly bumped those of Angel Wings and the bemused, tipsy gothette. "Congratulations to us all," Jane said.