Shatter the Earth (Cassandra Palmer 10)

Pritkin was a big boy, but not like this. The glistening column of flesh, still water bright and crystal clear, seemed too large, too broad, and brought up strange thoughts in my sleep fuzzed brain. Would it even fit? Would it have to? If it was water, shouldn’t it be able to become any shape I liked? Fitting me exactly, filling me precisely, taking on the exact dimensions that I wanted, and suddenly, desperately needed?

I didn’t know where these thoughts were coming from, but he seemed to be responding to them. He took himself in hand, and even the sight of one of those sudsy gloves caressing the watery column didn’t make me want to laugh. He coaxed it to become even thicker, even longer, but all the while, those strange eyes weren’t on himself.

They were on me.

And they were . . . odd.

I’d have expected them to be transparent like the rest of him, or white with the steam still boiling around inside that strange skin. They weren’t. I couldn’t tell if it was him, or if there was something behind him that was being distorted by the watery body, but they were black and gleaming.

“Pritkin?” I said, and for the first time, heard the unease in my voice.

There was no reply. Just a ripple in the distortion as he moved closer. Close enough that I could feel the steam pouring off that strange skin, hot against my own; close enough that I could taste the suds dripping off his shoulder onto my lips; close enough that I could see that no, it wasn’t something behind him; those eyes really were black and glittering.

Beautiful, I thought. And framed by long, crystalline lashes that reflected the lamplight like tiny icicles. Like his spiky hair, half colorless, and half blond when the light hit it just right. Or the stubble on his cheeks, because, as usual, he’d forgotten to shave.

I lifted a hand, unthinking, and cupped his face. And I could feel the whiskers against my skin. They were tiny pinpricks, hard and fully realized, and flooding with color now, too.

But it wasn’t from the lamp this time. My hand moved along his jaw, but instead of leaving clear water behind, it left something else. A print in brilliant peach remained in place, as if I’d dipped my hand into paint and then caressed his face with it.

It glowed warm and bright and alive for an instant, before sinking through the watery surface and dissolving into the whole. But it didn’t disappear. It lent a faint tinge to the face, to the entire head. I could see it spiraling out as the steam had done, filling the area before falling downwards toward the shoulders, and being lost in the larger sea of water below.

The same thing was happening to the new fingermarks I had made, which spotted his jawline for a second, before being absorbed like the rest. They didn’t make much of a difference, either, at least to his coloring. But they did have an effect—on the eyes.

Unlike the rest of him, they held their own color, with no help from me. And they had noticeably brightened. Black and glittering, like all the stars in the heavens were staring down at me.

Watching him prepare to take me.

Because that’s what he was about to do, I realized, as a cool hand smoothed down my body, taking on color and warmth as it did so. And then dipped in between my legs, and there was no clumsiness this time, no hesitancy. Two fingers entered me, making me gasp as they pushed deep, exploring my contours as if he’d never felt them before.

And when they emerged, they were as real and solid as if carved out of flesh.

Okay, I thought abruptly, time to wake up now. I instinctively tried to move back, but the still mostly translucent fingers on my thigh clenched, holding me in place, and a watery knee kept me splayed open on the other side. I lay there watching the room through the man-shaped distortion above me, and felt a little like that, too: confused and disoriented, and utterly immobilized.

Not that it mattered, I thought; all I had to do was tell him to let me up. This was Pritkin, after all. Even in a dream, he would never—

My thoughts cut off as something pushed against my body, thick and huge and hotter than skin warm. And big—still far too big, I thought in rising panic. I started really fighting then, still not going anywhere but struggling hard enough to send waves of water flowing over the sides of the tub.

Until a strange languor flooded me, slowing my struggles, fogging my mind, and sending my body slowly spilling back against the porcelain, unable to struggle or even to remember exactly why I had been. Unable to do anything except watch in disturbed fascination as the color of my body surged upward, spilling onto his torso, splashing his hipbones with color, pooling in his naval, washing pale fingers up as far as his bottom ribs.

And wherever it went, the swirling steam receded, and the body took on a very different appearance. Not just in color but in substance, from vague and undefined to hard and solid, with thick musculature, velvety skin, and tiny golden hairs that caught the light. No longer a phantom made of mist but a real, tangible man.

And, suddenly, this was no longer some dream induced fantasy, distant and hazy. It was about as immediate as it got, frighteningly so. Yet my body went nowhere, ignoring my mind’s increasingly strident commands.

Because he’d finally finished his metamorphosis.

He was gasp-inducingly large from what I could see, but not so much as before. Not enough to stop the smooth head from pushing inside; not enough to halt the broad shaft, still groan-inducingly big, from beginning to follow; not enough to stop him from—

“Pritkin!” I screamed, staring up into those glittering eyes as his hips abruptly thrust forward.

And realized something that I should have all along.

That wasn’t Pritkin.

Chapter Twenty-One

The door burst open, letting in a flood of cold air from the hall. I barely noticed, because another flood—of hot rain—was suddenly pelting down all around me, sending my body plunging under the bathwater. And when I came up, spluttering and gasping—

The fake Pritkin was gone.