Backs Against the Wall (Survival Series)

by Tracey Ward

  “Yeah,” Ryan says, smiling sadly. “They know me there.”

  Chapter Five

  A week later, while Ryan and Trent show their faces in the Underground on the regular, I make a visit to Crenshaw. It’s a little scary going out with my arm in the splint and the Risen population still bloated from the fall of the Colony, a Colony I have now lived inside of, but I’m going stir crazy in my apartment. I have to get out and I have to face Crenshaw.

  When I go to my wall of weapons to pick something out, I nearly burst into tears. There, hanging in its home, is my ASP. It must have been here this entire time, I just never noticed it because I didn’t need to, but now that I see it I’m nearly crying with relief. After Trent saw me taken he must have told Ryan where it happened. Maybe Trent told him that I’d lost my weapon or maybe he found it on accident, who knows. The important thing is that it’s here, right where I need it.

  And I do need it. The Risen population is still high, still an ongoing problem reminding me of the old days. They shuffle and bumble down the streets, through alleyways and into everything. I stand in my doorway for a bit watching and remembering as they walk into each other. Into the remnants of cars. Into old sign posts. It’d be comical if it weren’t such a pain. If it didn’t remind me of the worst times of my very, very worst case scenario life.

  I manage to use my ASP to take down three on the way to the woods. My breathing hitches as I run toward them. I can’t afford to be scared but I can’t trust myself either, not with this jacked up arm. I struggle to stay calm, to be numb and smart as I work through them. Each one drops with a fractured skull and a hit to the temple just for good measure. Injured or no, it never hurts to be thorough. Only this does, it hurts. Physical activity of any kind, especially running or bashing in skulls, makes my arm throb to a painful rhythm.

  When I reach the woods and call out for Crenshaw, I’m shocked to see him emerge entirely from the shadows. He walks right up to me, staff ever in hand, and wraps his arms tightly around me without a word.

  “Cren,” I say awkwardly, my mouth pressed into the hood of his robe, “do you know you’re hugging me?”

  He pulls back, still holding onto my shoulders. His face is very nearly beaming. “Athena, I’d thought you lost for the ages.”

  I smile despite my discomfort at his proximity. “No, I’m still here.”

  “Thank the stars for small favors,” he says, gesturing to the blue, afternoon sky. “Come, sit with me awhile and tell me of your adventures to the great beyond.”

  He leads me through the bushes toward his hut, past the traps and snares meant to deter and murder anyone dumb enough to trespass here.

  “There’s not much to tell, really.”

  “They took you,” he says frankly, his face firm. Annoyed.

  “Yes.”

  “The rogues,” he grumbles as we enter his hut. He sits me down across from him at his small table. “They knew not with whom they were dealing. Athena! Goddess of War and Vengeance.”

  “Amen to that.”

  “How did you escape?”

  I hesitate, unsure how I want to handle this. I didn’t want to admit to Ryan what I’d done and I can’t imagine telling the story to Crenshaw. He might be proud, which I don’t know if I’ll particularly like, or he could be angry with me. Again, not something I’d like.

  “I heeded wise words,” I tell him meaningfully. “I kept my wits sharp and luck favored the prepared.”

  “Ha!” Crenshaw exclaims excitedly, clapping his hands together once. “Wonderful. Well done, my dear. I knew you were not a lost cause.”

  “Thank you,” I say, not really sure it’s a compliment. Maybe it’s just an observation. Stupid Trent.

  “Your arm,” Crenshaw says suddenly, his demeanor becoming sedated. “Have you been caring for it? Do you need anything for the pain or infection?”

  “No, thank you. I’ve been taking medicines for it.”

  He scowls at me. “From whom? Not one of those Charlatan’s in the markets, I hope.”

  “No, Cren. From you.”

  Crenshaw stares at me for a lone moment before nodding sagely. “The boy.”

  “Yes,” I reply, feeling nervous. I’m breaking a rule here by mentioning a Lost Boy in his presence. We never speak specifics and I’ve just gotten very, very specific.

  “He’s a good one, that lad. Stay close to him.”

  “Really?” I ask, shocked. “I thought I was supposed to avoid the company of men.”

  Crenshaw nods again, watching me. “There are few good men left in this world of wraiths, devils and fools, my child. Should you find one, you’d be an idiot to walk away. And you, Athena,” he says, heavily, “are no idiot.”

  “I don’t know about that. I’ve been pretty stupid lately.”

  He waves my protest away dismissively. “Youth!” he cries, as though that one word explains away every complication in my entire world.

  And who knows? Maybe it does.

  ***

  Two nights later I’m scared to death by a pounding on my door. It’s not frantic, but it’s loud and insistent. I wrap my blanket around me, hiding the shorts and threadbare t-shirt I’m sleeping in, and run for the door.

  “Who is it?” I whisper into the crack, feeling ridiculous. I’m not used to visitors. All I know is that if their answer is ‘Ughhhhh’, they are not coming in.

  “Joss, it’s us,” Ryan replies weakly.

  I quickly lift the board off the door and fling it open. There they stand, Trent and Ryan, leaning against each other. They’re both covered in blood. Some of it is way too dark to be theirs. To be human.

  “What the hell happened to you two?”

  “Can we come in and tell you that?” Ryan asks impatiently. “My leg is killing me.”

  I step aside to let them pass, but I eye Trent hard as I do. “Why does his leg hurt?”

  “You ask that like you think I had something to do with it.”

  “Did you?”

  Trent chuckles quietly. I get no other answer.

  I slam the door, dropping the board over it again. Trent drops Ryan down carefully in the middle of the room. He collapses back, breathing hard with his arm thrown over his eyes. I watch as he flexes his right leg back and forth, a grimace etched around his mouth.

  “What happened?” I ask again, my tone softening. I go to step closer, to kneel down to help him, but Trent comes straight at me. I instinctively back up against the door, my eyes darting toward my weapons wall as his shadow moves through the dark loft.

  “Easy,” he says calmly. “I was just leaving.”

  “What about Ryan?”

  “You’ll play nurse to him better than I will. The gang can’t know he’s fighting freelance. I’ve gotta get back and tell everyone he’s spending the night with a pro named Freedom.”

  I frown, confused and freaked out. “Is that where he was? With a whore?”

  Ryan lifts his head off the ground to glare at me. “You think a girl did this to me?”

  “Why not?” I ask with a shrug. “I could.”

  He laughs, dropping his head hard against the wood floor. “Touché.”

  “You’re not really a girl, though,” Trent tells me.

  Ryan laughs again.

  “Wow, Trent, thanks for that,” I say sarcastically.

  “I mean, you look like one right now, for sure,” he says, his eyes falling down my body exposed by the drooping blanket. I snatch it up closer around myself, glaring at him as he grins. “But your average girl couldn’t survive like you have.”

  “Is that a compliment?”

  He shakes his head, stepping closer and forcing me away from the door. “Nope. Not everything is a compliment or an insult, Joss. Sometimes things just are what they are.” He steps outside into the hall. “Take care of our boy. I’ll see you two in the morning.”

  “That guy is…” I begin, dropping the board across the door yet again. I don’t know what else to say. He’s n
ot annoying, but he’s not fun either.

  “He’s Trent,” Ryan mumbles, still flexing his leg.

  “Exactly.”

  And suddenly Trent’s parting philosophy lesson makes a world of sense. I decide he’s annoying after all.

  “So what happened?” I ask Ryan, plopping down on the floor beside him.

  He lowers his arm, giving me a good look at his face in the moonlight. It’s covered in small cuts and tiny abrasions. He’s bleeding a little everywhere. Walking through the streets like this, casting out that living, bleeding scent, was insanely dangerous. It makes me grateful for the dark undead blood splattered over his shirt and coat. At least he had some camouflage.

  “I fought in the Underground tonight.”

  “You’ve done it before, haven’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How often?”

  He looks away, staring straight up at the ceiling. He looks exhausted, beaten. I have a hard time believing that this is what winning looks like, but he’s still alive so it must be.

  “Not as often as my brother. He did it a lot. He was kind of a legend.”

  “Is that how people know you there?”

  “Partly. I haven’t fought since just before he died. He didn’t want me to. He fought for our gang as a way of making money. To earn favors from other gangs. It’s dangerous though.”

  “Yeah, I imagine. You’re fighting Risen for fun. What if you’d been bitten?” I look over his body, finding more black tar blood as I search. “What if some of this has gotten inside you?”

  “That’s not why it’s dangerous.”

  “Ryan, you could die. It’s a big, big part of it.”

  I feel panic begin to well inside of me as I look down at him, busted and bleeding. There’s Risen gore all over him, more of it by the minute it seems like, and I’m flashing back to all the times I’ve had to put a gun to someone’s head and lay them down just before the fever took over. Just before they stopped being them and started eating me.

  I reach for his shirt, tugging it up toward his face. “We have to get you out of these clothes and cleaned up. You can’t sit in them acting like the blood isn’t seeping into you.”

  “Whoa, Joss, slow down,” he says, trying to stop my hands.

  I won’t have it. I slap his hands away and yank on the collar of his shirt, pulling him up into a sitting position. His face is close to mine, his breath on my skin and the sheen of his blood is reflecting bright in the moonlight. In my watery eyes. I yank on the hem of the shirt, pulling it up forcefully. This time he lets me. He puts his arms over his head and lets me carefully peel it over his face, taking extreme care not to let the outside of the saturated shirt touch his vulnerable, open skin.

  When I toss it aside, already dreaming of the fire I’ll burn it in, I feel his eyes on me. Watching. Worrying. I refuse to meet them. Instead, I look over his now exposed chest, arms, stomach and shoulders, searching for any kind of cut that could have left him exposed. But there’s nothing. He’s perfect. He’s safe.

  He’s an idiot.

  I sit back hard on my heels. My eyes are still burning, but I let him see.

  “Never again,” I tell him firmly.

  “I’m fine. You can see it, I’m fine,” he says calmly, smiling and reaching for my hand.

  I jerk it away. “This time. This time you’re fine. But what about next time? People die doing this, don’t they?”

  “Yeah,” he admits quietly, his smile gone. “They do all the time.”

  “Never again,” I repeat.

  He sighs as he runs his hand over his hair. “I have to. It’s what you need to get to The Hive.”

  “We’ll find another way.”

  “There is no other way.”

  “You’re not worth it, Ryan,” I snap. He looks at me, surprised by my tone. “No matter what I need, you’re not worth it. You can’t come bursting in here, scribbling your gibberish all over everything, making me give a crap, then go out there and die. You can’t.”

  “Hey,” he breathes, reaching for my hand again.

  And again, I jerk it back.

  “Hey,” he repeats, this time forcefully. Like a scolding. “Give me your hand, Joss.”

  I let out a rough breath, then try to smile at him weakly. “Just because I don’t want you to die doesn’t mean I want you to touch me.”

  “You’re a massive pain, do you know that?”

  I reach out, taking his one hand in both of mine. It feels less claustrophobic this way, having him pressed between my palms instead of being clenched inside his. I can handle this.

  “I know that,” I agree, staring at his long, beaten fingers. “We need to clean you up.”

  He stands, then tugs on my hands, trying to pull me up as well. I stay stubbornly seated, looking up at him.

  “Who’s the whore?”

  “What?” he laughs.

  “Freedom. You guys didn’t make her up, did you? She’s real.”

  He sighs, looking uncomfortable. “Yeah, she’s real.”

  “Who is she?”

  “She’s a girl my brother was… friendly with.”

  “She was his girl?”

  Ryan shakes his head. “I don’t think so. Not really. But he never paid her. I told you, he was a legend in the Underground. This girl really liked him. Her and a lot of other girls.”

  “Ugh,” I groan, finally standing.

  “Hey, it’s one of the perks. You get good at it, the women start flocking to you.”

  I point my finger at his mangled face. “Never again!”

  He laughs all the way to the bathroom.

  I sit on the closed toilet and watch him get cleaned up. I offer to help but he waves me away, claiming he’s done it plenty on his own. I believe him.

  “How is becoming a Risen not the dangerous part of fighting?”

  Ryan hesitates, the alcohol soaked rag hovering over a particularly nasty cut on his face.

  “The dangerous part is being good at it,” he says quietly. He presses the rag to his skin, flinching slightly. “I got in the ring a few times, but it was never anything official.”

  “By ‘official’ do you mean being owned by the gang?” I ask, thinking of Nats and Breanne.

  “Yeah. They wanted me to fight for them too, but Kev wouldn’t let me. I still got noticed, though. I got offers from other gangs to join up with them.”

  “To fight for them.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know what I just realized?”

  Ryan smirks as he dabs at another spot of blood on his face. “That being a fighter is close to being a prostitute?”

  I frown at him, worrying he’s a mind reader. “No. I just realized I don’t know the name of your gang.”

  “Do you want to?”

  “Is it bad if I do?”

  “No,” he chuckles. “It’s the Hyperions. It’s Greek for one of the Titans. He was the father of the sun, the moon and the dawn.”

  I snort. “So you’re a humble bunch?”

  Ryan smirks sideways at me. “It’s not as impressive as it sounds. He got it on with his sister to have them.”

  “Sick!”

  “Yeah. But we didn’t exactly pick the name. The building we’re in used to be a theater. It was called the Hyperion.”

  “Original.”

  “Judgmental,” he says, pointing at me.

  “It’s rude to point.”

  “Pot and the kettle and all that,” he mutters, dabbing ointment on his fingertips and applying it to his face.

  I shrug. “I can’t help it. I was raised by wolves.”

  “Wolves have better manners.”

  “You hate wolves!” I protest.

  “I hate a wolf,” he corrects, “and he probably still has better manners than you.”

  I kick him in the shin. Not hard, but it’s enough to jostle him and his responding laugh is short lived as it turns into a grunt of pain. I’ve made him slip, digging his finger into a cut o
n his face.

  “I’m sorry,” I say hastily, springing up to stand beside him. “Let me see.”

  He lets me stand in front of him, dropping his hands down to his sides as I rise up on my toes to look.

  “Do you want me to finish it?” I ask, my breath rebounding off his face back at me. I hadn’t realized I was standing so close. I meet his eyes and take a deep, calming breath. He’s staring at me, watching me. He’s patient, but he’s tense. “Ryan?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you want to kiss me?” I whisper.

  He nods slowly, his eyes never leaving mine.

  “Then why don’t you?”

  “Every time I go to touch you,” he says softly, “you pull away. I don’t want to crowd you. I don’t want you to run.”

  I reach down with my right hand, taking hold of his. I move it until it sits heavy and warm on my hip. He follows my lead, pressing his other hand on the opposite side of my waist.

  “There, see? You’re touching me and I’m still here.”

  “This time,” he points out.

  “I know. I’m a pain.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  He kisses me softly, his hands pulling me closer to him. He’s careful of my arm this time. He pulls my hips flush with his but leans over me with his upper body. He’s holding me and hovering over me and I feel weightless and strange. And warm. His kiss, his breath, courses through me the way the vodka did, burning and churning into my stomach. His fingers find the edge of my thin t-shirt. They slip under, scorching across my skin. I start to feel anxious and so much more. So many things that I don’t understand.

  I pull away.

  Ryan takes his hands away, smiling that crooked smile of his and just like that, the heat fades. I can breathe again.

  “We should go to bed,” I breathe, trying to bring myself down. To remind myself I’m alright.

  Ryan stares are me, surprised.

  I swat at him. Hard. I’m not good at being playful.

  “Not like that and you know it.”

  “I know,” he admits, grinning. “I know what you mean. We should get to sleep.”

  When we step out of the bathroom, Ryan immediately heads for the door. He lays down slowly beside it, still being careful with his right leg.