by V. K. Ludwig
Melek gave me a wink. “It’s a date then.”
My heart rose physically inside my chest. I folded one hand over the muscle so I could cling to it, along with the lie that this Vetusian made me feel nothing. But reality swept in and handed me a bitchslap. Something inside me ached for his warmth, and the way his touch put me at ease.
What was wrong with me? That wasn’t how I should have reacted after what Kidan had put me through. Neither should I have sat on Melek’s lap. Felt the softness of his cheeks. The tenderness of his lips.
“Feel this.”
He leaned over and plucked a couple of flowers from a stalk, then stroked them over my arm. The translucent petals tingled against my skin, like tiny lightning strikes connecting one nerve ending to the next.
“What’s that?”
“Five-hundred of those can power a small household. They turn light into electricity, giving solar power an entirely new definition. Do you like it?”
“Yeah, it feels nice.”
One single flower stroked over my lips.
Melek stared at me, and his eyes deepened with longing. As if this caress completed that kiss we hadn’t shared last night. He had pulled away then, but even now, I still sensed the heat of his mouth so close to mine.
“Wait here!” he said and strolled off to a tree.
Balancing on those massive spikes, Melek climbed it by pulling himself up on the next higher one. He soon disappeared between blue foliage, the occasional leaf floating to the ground.
“He’s pretty cool,” Grace said, leaning her head against my shoulder. “What’s your verdict?”
I popped a quick kiss onto her forehead. “Why do you think I’m supposed to have one?”
“Well, I dunno, maybe because he visits you five times during your shifts?”
When all I did was stare at her, she rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Here’s some news: he’s into you. Seriously, nothing subtle about it.”
I rubbed my hand over my forehead, but it did nothing to keep that headache away. “Grace, that stuff is the last thing on my mind right now. Besides, shouldn’t he have a match?”
“Perhaps she died during phase one. Ask him.”
“I thought about that as well, but I don’t want to poke in old wounds. Melek doesn’t strike me as the guy who would pursue another female if he had a match.” I sighed. “In any case, he’s too young for me.”
She folded her arms in front of her chest and gave a shrug. “Why? How old is he?”
My shoulders bunched. “No idea, but it doesn’t matter anyway. However young it is it’s too young for me. I mean, look at him. He’s the kind of guy women like me would get a mommy-makeover for.”
“Oh my god, mom, you sound like you’re a month away from retirement, and sold your ovaries to science for a down payment on your apartment for assisted living.”
I gave her a dismissive wave and changed this absurd subject. “Hey… did you tell Melek that I was an accountant?”
“Mmm… no clue,” she said, tapping a finger against her lips. “Not that I remember. I might have, though. Why?”
“Because he knew although I never told him. He also said my name the day he walked into our place.”
“You still don’t trust him, do you?””
I took a deep breath, shaking my head at myself for what I was about to say. “Actually, I do trust him.”
Had since he’d healed my scratches and committed myself more and more to it each day. I’d never considered this living situation with Melek as something other than temporary. Not a choice but a necessity. But lately, I couldn’t help but enjoy having him around.
He hung from a branch now, those abs poking out from underneath his shirt defined even at a distance. His strong arms dangled him back toward the trunk. The same ones which had wrapped me in so much comfort, providing me with a sense of safety as if Kidan had never existed. Was that normal?
Where had he been before everything went to shit? Before I turned from a woman wanting that Gaia link to work so badly into this traumatized bundle of tears and rotten nerves? Because the truth was, before all this, I would have loved to go on a date with a guy like him.
“I failed terribly,” Melek said as he walked up to us, a scratch running over the side of his chin. “Turns out, those flowers I was trying to get your mom aren’t in bloom. But I’m happy to report the thorns didn’t retreat yet, and they’re as sharp as they were ten solar cycles ago. However… I got this.” He pulled a bud from his pocket, deep purple and almost ready to burst open, which he placed above my ear. “Beautiful.”
He kept his eyes on me, dragging his incisors over his lower lip before he finished it up with a lick. It had been a long while since a man gave me that kind of look. The one that had my knees turn to Jell-O.
I pulled my gaze away from him, ashamed of that affection spreading like wildfire, like embers lighting charred wood. I wasn’t interested in Melek. And even if I was, which I wasn’t, then it would be nothing but a fling. He was too young. Too not-my-match. Or as he once said, he would have been one of many not supposed to stick.
“What’s that over there?” Grace asked, finger pointing at one of the many large buildings lining the horizon.
“Opera,” Melek said, then let his finger jump from building to building. “That’s the Imperial Assembly. The tall one is for large gatherings, usually political events. The one on the hill belongs to the house of L’naghal, which is —”
He stared at something behind us and cocked his head, his weight shifting from one leg to the other.
A glance over my shoulder.
Nothing.
“What’s wrong?”
His lips pressed into a thin line, and his hands fisted and released by his sides. “Nothing. Just… Let’s keep going.”
We went down yet another ramp, the spices of the market square once more filling the air.
Trk!
My ears pricked at something.
A pebble rolling over the street?
Melek tilted his head in the direction of the sound, listening intently. Then he grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “Someone’s following us.”
My heart gave a whomp against my ribcage. “What? Are you sure?”
“Positive,” he said and pulled me back into motion, my toes going numb underneath me. “Grace, stay here by my side, please.”
“Why? What happened?”
He grabbed her arm and pulled her along with him, his pace quickening. Along the street. Into a narrow alley. There, he positioned us against the wall with a tense smile on his face.
“You’re always safe with me, alright? Wait here. Don’t scream. Don’t run unless I’m on the ground. But if it gets that far, you find the first Jal’zar pleasure worker and tell her you belong to me. Got it?”
The alley dimmed around me, the stone turning soft underneath my soles. “But…”
The rest of my words drowned underneath the gust of his motion. He turned away and walked back toward the end of the alley, pressing himself against the wall at the corner.
Then he waited.
And waited.
Grace grabbed my arm, the shake of her body infecting my muscles, making me quiver against the cold, damp stone wall behind us. My mind fluttered away with panic. Where those the bounty hunters Melek told me about? It had to be.
Grace mumbled something my brain couldn’t decipher, my ears too trained on the grit crunching underneath my trembling soles. The shouts coming from the marketplace. The hum of hundreds of creatures in conversation somewhere at the other end of this alley.
Something cut the corner.
Stormed our way.
Melek rammed his hand against his neck and pounded him against the wall, lifting the stranger up against it a moment later.
Green robes flowed inches from the ground. Torn. Hem soaked with mud. The Vetusian let his hands clasp around Melek’s arm, tugging, kicking his legs.
But Melek didn’t move, choking t
he breath out of him until panicked limbs slowed into defeat. Then he dropped him to the ground and pulled him over to us by the collar of his robes.
He slammed him against the wall right next to me, making a grunt push from the scholar’s lungs. “How high is the bounty?”
The scholar groaned, his head flopping from side to side. He reeked of urine and something more rancid, his cheeks so sunken in, his face was like thin skin draped tightly over sharp bones.
Melek slapped him twice. “Don’t you go passing out on me, brother. How much?”
“Five-hundred ICs,” the scholar snarled and bared his teeth, brown stumps lining pale gums.
“For her?” Melek grabbed him at the back of his neck and turned his head toward me. “Take your cape off, Katie.”
My fingers shook, but I did as he asked, the scholar’s eyes, blue and gray, growing wider with each inch of fabric bunching heavy against my shoulders.
“Five hundred for her,” he laughed and coughed at the same time. “Another five for you.”
Melek paled right in front of my eyes. “What?”
The scholar’s head dropped, chin hitting sternum, his posture slumping.
“Uh-uh, I’m not letting you off that easy.” Melek shook the guy back to consciousness. “On what crime?”
He only laughed. A terrible, bubbly, rotten sound at the back of his raw throat.
“Melek, I don’t like this,” I said, my voice tight with confusion and fear alike.
He clenched his hand into a fist and punched the scholar right in the face, making a squeal lodge from my throat. The Vetusian collapsed to the side, head hitting the hard stone underneath him. And yet he laughed.
Melek got up and tugged my hood back over my head. “Sorry, but I had no other choice. He can’t follow us to Brot Adnak.”
He took our hands and led us toward the other end of the alley, mumbling “One lunar cycle. Not even one fucking lunar cycle and the Empire already has their first clue on us. Shit.”
Everything from my chest down knotted up, a stabbing pain stirring my guts. Perhaps we shouldn’t have gone out? But what kind of life was that? Locked up in a brothel?
“Who was that guy?” Grace asked.
Melek guided us from one side alley into the next, his posture stiff. “Just a junkie. Five-hundred ICs isn’t enough to attract professional bounty hunters, but every shitback on Odheim will try to make quick credits on us.”
“Why you?”
He stopped at the end of the street, breath bursting from his mouth. “I have no fucking clue. We need media access.”
He took our hands and led us toward the other end of the alley. “Grace, see that stand over there? With the holograms rotating?”
Her voice came out a squeak. “Yes.”
“Here’s one credit,” Melek said, dropping the translucent, tear-shaped chip into her palm. “You simply place it in front of the merchant, dip your head, and grab the silver sphere. Understood?”
“O-okay.”
“Keep your head low. Make sure he can’t see too much of your face.”
My pulse pounded against my eardrum at each of Grace’s steps toward the merchant, each second until she returned stretching in front of me like eternity.
“This one?” she asked as she came back, placing the sphere into Melek’s palm.
“Yup, that’s it.” He took a few steps back into the alley and squatted down behind a stack of broken crates, waving us toward him. “These are public announcements. Seems like we’re going to see my pretty face floating between us in just a moment.”
He spun the sphere in his hand, letting rays of light shine from it as it began to float. They formed distorted pictures, slowly forming into the hologram of a Vetusian, his voice driving the silence from the alley.
“… The wedding will take place at the Imperial Assembly Earth One…”
Melek twirled his finger around the sphere, speeding up the hologram. Pictures came and went. Planets. Buildings. Vetusians. When a hologram of Melek’s head formed in front of us, he stopped.
“… Healer Melek wanted for the murder of warrior Kidan, and his reward set to five-hundred Imperial Credits,” the voice said. “The Vetusian is associated with the Gaia Link Split Case —”
Melek shut down the hologram. “They probably found my DNA in your apartment. I was on the video footage. Walked to the bathroom to close the door.”
My heart sunk so deep it threatened to fall right through me. “This is all my fault. I’m so sorry for dragging you into this.”
Melek cupped my cheek, sending a million sparks into my skin. “Now, we’re in this together for real.”
How could he say something like that?
Legs turned wobbly underneath me, but his arms wrapped around me as if he’d seen it. I sunk into him then into myself, letting confusion take hold.
I had thrown this Vetusian into exile. Turned him into a wanted murderer. Other guys had quit on me for much less, and I couldn’t shake the feeling, the fear, the faith that Kidan was a hiccup of destiny.
I stared at how Melek took my hand into his and guided me back home. One finger fit between the others as if they were carved to interlock without a knuckle out of place. He had my complete trust. What else was I willing to give him?
Thirteen
Melek
* * *
I put my bag on the couch and opened it, adding a few items to those nutri-spheres tossing around inside. Pins loaded with adrenaline, vitamin serums, needles, and thread.
Katie had finished her shift not too long ago, but the apartment already lay dark and silent around me. Even after her panic attack, she continued behind the bar. Something she’d insisted on, so I let her. Each night I checked on her, offering a shirt to cry into if needed. Each night she received me with a smile, her confidence growing in the shade of my presence.
I grabbed my cape from the hook beside the door, that shaggy thing a constant companion ever since the incident at the alley. But I would gladly be the hunted if it meant I could distract from Katie and Grace.
The squeak of the apartment door took on the sound of my name.
“Melek.”
My pulse quickened even as I turned around in slow-motion, finding Katie standing at the center of the living area. She held herself in a tight embrace, hands rubbing up and down her arms.
“Nightmare?”
“No. Just couldn’t sleep.” Her gaze dropped to the ground and she rocked back and forth on her heels. “Where, um, where are you going?”
A layer of ice came over my heart and penetrated deep into every chamber, turning that patched-up muscle of mine extra brittle. And yet it pumped a liquid kind of hope into each of my arteries.
However unreliable our link was at first, it now hummed between us with such strength, I sensed its vibration whenever I came close to her. And there was no way she didn’t notice it. I could tell by the way she began looking for my touch, resting her head against my chest even as she laughed at one of my stupid jokes.
Fuck it.
It was time to take off those white layers I hid behind, one by one, stripping down to my black bones. After everything Katie had gone through, the least I could do was show her the Melek I really was before this went further. And it would because my resistance was faltering fast.
“If you want to find out, you’ll have to put your shoes and cape on.”
She hesitated for a moment, her gaze flicking up at me from a lowered head, then she nodded. “Just give me a second.”
It took her longer than a second, but she eventually returned dressed, that fabric of her hood struggling to hide her beauty no matter how heavy.
We walked down the stairs and left through the back door, the air hanging thick and sweet around us at this time of night.
“Come.”
Katie didn’t even look at my waiting hand. She took it without a glance as if she needed little more than my body heat to locate it.
“Isn’t this dan
gerous?”
“Nah, everyone avoids where we’re heading. And those who don’t might have more credits on their heads than me.”
With my bag in one hand and my match in the other, I led her along narrow streets. It didn’t take long until the lingering scents of spices from the market faded away, slowly replaced by something much more acidic, stinging.
With each step, my palm slickened against hers, and I adjusted my grip several times. “Remember the evening you said you wondered what kind of male I was? Calling Brot Adnak my family and all?”
She swung her other hand up and wiped it over her face. “Don’t remind me of that. I’m seriously embarrassed I said that.”
I stopped and took her in, my lips aching to touch hers just once. Strands of her light brown hair cascaded down her shoulder, almost taking on a gray hue underneath Odheim’s purple atmosphere. But her irises seemed to soak up the light, reflecting it back in several shades of blue.
“There is something I want you to know about me, and it isn’t pretty. Okay?”
She swallowed hard but nodded. “Okay.”
I pulled her back into motion, the stench of vomit and feces soon undeniable. My eyes darted around for the source, my lungs disabling when they found it. They always did.
The Wall was a persistent smudge of filth. Uniform by uniform, stone by stone, Vetusians lined along the wall of bricks, wasting away underneath the glory of the Empire.
Bodies emaciated.
Minds sick.
Souls long abandoned.
Even in the warm glimmer of Odheim, their skin appeared a pasty gray, their torn uniforms soiled with dried vomit. Their grunts and moans decayed the marrow of my bones, buzzing in my throat as if muscle memory wanted me to join.
“Don’t tie them into a conversation.” I flung my bag to the ground and put a few nutri-spheres on my arm. “They ramble nothing but incoherent nonsense half the time anyway.”
I gave a shove against the first one. “Wake up and eat something, brother.”