Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1
Blair
July 5, 2025, Earth
I loved Porsha, but she made you realize why they put "Warning: contents may catch fire" on a blowtorch. "You stole a bush viper?"
Our drummer nodded enthusiastically. "A spiny bush viper," she corrected. "Isn't she pretty? Look at her coloring!" She held the little snake higher, showing off spiky bright-yellow scales that screamed "I'm fucking venomous." To drive that fact home, the snake locked eyes with me and hissed. "They also had a red one, but it was more of a muddy red, and I figured the fans would be able to see her bright-yellow coloring better. I named her Piper."
I struggled to clip the skull mask to the shoulder of my lucky jacket, but the clasp snapped back into place too soon, clamping down on the end of my finger. "Ow!" I shook my hand. The skull's jaw fell open, as if in shock. I chose to believe the snake was the reason, instead of my inability to hook a mask onto a damn jacket. I could go on without it. But the skull's eyes had a glowing red light that I had programmed to light up during certain chords of our songs. Combined with the jacket's neon-green color and pins from my favorite bands, it always made me feel like a true rock star. I am nothing if not a thematic bitch.
Jackie took pity on me and set her eyeliner aside to hook the skull in place. Naturally, because it hated me, the skull snapped in on her first try. She gave me a look.
I returned it in kind. "Well, I loosened it."
"Sure."
"Anyway, Porsha, my dear friend, my reason for day drinking-"
"Hey!"
"Why?" I asked, abandoning my jacket on the dresser table to face her. "Why did you steal a bush viper?"
Porsha fixed me with an incredulous look as if the answer was obvious. Seeing that I still wasn't picking up what she was laying down, Porsha yielded and said, "Blair, this is the finals! If we want to win this thing, we need a gimmick. You know Stray Planet is gonna come in hard with a crazy light show. If we want any kind of chance of winning against oiled-up
K-pop dancers with strobe lights, then we need this. Besides, we're literally named the Vipers; she's the perfect mascot."
She wasn't completely wrong. K-pop wasn't the usual genre seen at the Emergenza Festival, but Stray Planet came in and dominated with the younger audiences. On stages full of rock, indie, and alternative bands, their group stuck out like a shining beacon. I couldn't even just blame it on the light show or glistening pecs either. K-pop might not have been my usual genre, but I couldn't deny that their music was fire.
"Oh Porsha." I reached out to pat her pretty, empty head, but thought better of it seeing as she was still holding her contraband viper. "I want to know what possessed you to immediately jump to a deadly animal as a gimmick. Where did you even get that thing?"
"Didn't I tell you? My uncle got me a part-time job at the zoo. The snake guy always spends his lunch breaks in his truck, so all I had to do was sneak into his office and snag his little snake grabby thing and one of the portable cages. She didn't even fight me when I picked her up." She held the snake near her face and cooed lovingly at its death glare. "Cause you're a sweet girl, aren't you, Piper?"
The snake hissed, causing Porsha to rear back with a start and all but toss the poor abductee back into her cage.
"See?" I shouted. "She damn near tore your face off. That's what you get for stealing snakes like a damn fool. After the show, you're bringing her right back to where you found her."
"No, come on, Blair, give her a chance. Look, we've been building our fan base for the past two years, and look at where we are. Still no record deal, no major exposure outside of the US, and we're still competing for scraps in every music competition we can afford to enter. If we want to make it big, we need to up our social media game. The best way to do that is with some kind of gimmick. Like how Ozzy bit the head off that bat."
"Ah, uh, no. I'm not biting the head off no damn snake. Porsha, you lost your mind."
"No, no! Nothing like that at all. Just give her a little kiss on the head before the show. It will be just like the bat thing but more humane. That's the kind of thing that will go viral on TikTok!"
"Yes, I can see the caption now. 'Dumbass lead singer dies live on stage after kissing a snake.' I'm sure you and Jackie will make a fortune selling T-shirts with my obituary on them."
Jackie snorted behind me, not even bothering to pause putting on her makeup. "As if anyone would buy a shirt with your face on it."
I met her gaze through the reflection in the mirror. "I hope you get sick."
She snort-laughed into her makeup, causing blush to plume around her face until she was left coughing.
Colton appeared in the doorway. "Vipers, you're on in ten." The stage manager held up a finger when Jackie opened her mouth to speak, pressing his other hand to his earpiece. He left just as quickly, shutting the door behind him.
"It's now or never," Porsha said to me. "Come on, just give her a-"
I cut her off with a wave of my hand. "No, we are not doing the snake thing. We made it this far into the competition without any silly gimmicks. We don't need a light show or a bush viper."
"But-"
"No," I stated firmly, grabbing my guitar. My phone buzzed in my pocket. The caller ID read "Red Car." I blocked the number, then set my phone down on the counter and checked my eyeliner.
"Bad date?" Porsha asked.
"No, they were fine. And we move on."
"Damn, that's cold."
I shrugged. "What do you want me to do, send them a fruit basket? We had some fun in the sun, the pool, Jackie's greenhouse-"
"What?" cried Jackie.
"And now we go our separate ways," I finished.
Porsha shook her head. "Girl, you need to be careful playing with these hearts."
"Excuse you, I'm clean. All my partners get tested."
"I meant attracting crazy people, Blair." Porsha stuck a hand on her hip, glaring at me the way she always did before launching into another true-crime safety briefing. "There was this guy who offered a woman his watch, only to report it stolen and have her arrested. Just so she would be brought back to him and be under his control!"
I rubbed at my temples. "Porsha, darling, sweetheart, that was Alchemy of Souls. We watched it together."
Her mouth fell open before she patted her hair and turned away. "Oh."
"Forget my dating habits. After we win this competition, I'll have enough money to abscond to a beach somewhere anytime I need to get away from a clinger. I haven't met anybody yet that could match my freak, and I refuse to settle for a damn thing."
"Say it again; it sounded so sweet," Jackie said, smiling. She got up from her chair and clasped each of us on the shoulder. "Fuck settling, fuck my dad; Porsha, I don't know who pissed you off-"
"Darius, from my spin class."
"Then fuck Darius too! After today, we'll be swimming in record deals and more money than we know what to do with."
"Oh my god, I could quit my job," Porsha gushed. "No more cleaning up animal shit!"
"You mean pay your bail after they found out you stole that snake," I corrected.
"Don't stress, it'll be fine. I just have to get her back before they do the security rounds in the morning. They take that shit pretty seriously after a sea lion got shot in a drive-by."
"I . . . bitch, what zoo do you work at?"
"Hey, guys?" Jackie asked.
"Look, I'm telling you it's fine. And I still think we should give the snake a try."
"Guys?" Jackie called again.
I held up a finger to Jackie and shouted, "For the last time, I am not kissing a snake."
"Guys!"
"What?" Porsha and I yelled in unison.
"Where's the snake?" Jackie asked in a voice way too damn calm to announce that a venomous snake was now on the loose.
I looked over to see an empty cage. Porsha sucked her teeth. "Well, that's not good."
"Oh shit," I screamed, jumping up on the counter. "Porsha! Porsha, where's the damn snake?"
Porsha held up her hands, eyes darting around the room. "All right, nobody panic, she couldn't have gone far, she's only eight inches long."
"That's worse!" Jackie screamed, jumping up next to me. "That little death bringer could be anywhere! Girl, why the fuck didn't you lock the cage?"
Porsha crossed her arms over her chest. "Okay, there's a lot of finger-pointing going on, so why don't we all just take a breath and look around the room? She probably just curled up somewhere warm."
Carefully, very carefully, Porsha and I searched the dressing room for any signs of the viper. Yet among all the musical equipment, changing outfits, and the small outlet store amount of makeup scattered among every available surface, we may as well have been searching for a needle in a haystack. One where you died if the needle pricked you. Fun stuff.
"Vipers, you're up!" Colton said, peeking his head through the door. When he noticed Porsha and me searching around the floor while Jackie was still firmly planted on the counter, he cocked his head to the side and asked, "What are you doing?"
"Well, fuck. Now what do we do?" Jackie asked.
I got to my feet and put on my best customer service smile. "Hey Colton, could we maybe go on after the next band? We kind of-"
"Absolutely not." The schedule's made well in advance, if your band can't compete, you automatically forfeit."
"We just need-"
"No exceptions, perform or don't. There're plenty of other bands waiting to take your spot. Are you coming or not?"
Both my bandmates looked at me. I clenched my teeth, calming my nerves. "We're coming."
Colton nodded and left.
I snatched my jacket from the counter and put it on. Then quickly checked the inside pocket just to make double sure there was no snake hiding inside. Thankfully, the pockets were empty, save for my pistol and lip gloss. "Looks like it's now or never. Grab your shit, girls; we'll lock the door on the way out and find the snake after."
Nothing got your blood pumping like the moment just before you struck your first chord onstage. The dimmed lights, the silent anticipation of the crowd, the pounding of your heart as your mind dances on the cusp of that high you can only get from roaring applause.
I steadied my breathing as the announcer made his introduction. Up here I wasn't just a fry cook. Up here, I wasn't a forgotten member of my own family. Up here, people listened.
And when the music started to play, the magic of their attention felt like gold in my veins. Unfortunately, the music was far too loud for me to actually listen to them. At the first scream of "SNAKE!" I thought maybe the crowd had come up with a new stage name for one of us. It wasn't until I heard the telltale hiss against my ear that I looked to my shoulder to find Piper half uncoiled from her hiding place in the skull of my jacket. In the corner of my eye, I could see Porsha throw her drumsticks aside and lunge for me. She wasn't fast enough. The snake poised to strike and shot out to bite my face.
A blinding white light flashed. The snake's fangs were frozen mere inches from my eye. I couldn't move an inch. My body became weightless as I was hurled toward something in the sky.
"Is that a damn spaceship?"
Chapter 2
Blair
Monsoon 54, Year 10, Waffles
Terrible squawking noises woke me out of a dazed slumber. I rubbed at my tired eyes, only to be startled by the sound of sloshing water as I brought my hand up. I opened my eyes to see a cracked glass pane that obscured most of my view. A thick green liquid came up to my neck and gushed out of the crack in the glass in a steady stream. Just beyond the glass, I could make out the blurred shapes of what looked like panicked birds fighting off a much bigger, snarling blob.
There was a shriek, then an orange bird slammed against the glass, causing the crack to spiderweb even further until the glass broke completely, and I fell from the tank in a rush of the green liquid. The room was in utter chaos. Freaky looking owl creatures were locked in battle with the most pissed off lion I'd ever seen. Rows of cylinder tanks like the one I'd been in lined the room, each of them held their own floating unconscious occupant.
"What . . . what's happening?"
Someone screamed, and I followed the noise to find a woman with wild red hair holding what looked like a cattle prod. She swung at the freak owls like a mad batter before bolting out of the room, several of the owls hot on her trail. The lion noticed the girl's departure and tried to run after her. A blue owl zapped him with his cattle prod. The lion gave off an enraged roar before sinking his teeth into the bird's skull. There was a crunch, and the bird fell limp. The lion tossed it aside and took off in the direction the girl ran.
The remaining birds flew out of the room in absolute chaos. One chirped loudly into a mic on the wall while owls in white coats rushed in to cart off the wounded. Several larger looking birds grabbed cattle prods from a shelf on the wall and chased after the lion.
I slowly stepped away from my broken pod. Glass crunched beneath my boots, alerting the owl shouting commands into the mic. His large yellow eyes locked in on me. Both of us froze to a standstill. Then the owl shrieked, pointing at me with his little clawed hand as he began shouting new commands into the mic.
I whipped my pistol from my jacket and took aim, but water gushed out of the barrel. Not knowing what else to do, I pocketed the pistol, picked up the unconscious orange owl from the pile of broken glass, and chucked it at the screeching snitch, effectively shutting him up. Before I could find out who the bird was calling, I darted out of the room toward where I saw the girl and lion escape. For all I knew, the redhead had found a way out, and I sure as hell didn't want to stay in the creepy-ass lab room with the rest of the floaty tube women.
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