* * *
I woke up with his arm wrapped around my waist and his stubble grazing my cheek.
“Don’t panic. Be still.”
I hadn’t been panicked until he’d said that. I hadn’t even been awake, but now I was and at full alert. Also panicked. There was something very close to me, so close I could feel the heat off its body, its breath fanning my face.
I should’ve lain there and feigned sleep. That would’ve been the smart thing to do. Instead my lids flickered open and froze. I was staring straight into the beast’s red eyes. They almost glowed they were so bright. It was covered in a wiry gray hair as it rested its weight on one dangerously clawed hand in front of me.
I bent my leg, raising my knee slightly higher so I could get my hand around the knife I’d borrowed from the kitchen and tucked into my boot. Last time I’d slept out here without it in my palm. From this day on, I’d be hugging that knife to my chest like it was the softest teddy bear, and I was four years old.
Its lips curled away from its teeth, which had to be five inches long, and it emitted a low growl. The beast knew exactly what I was doing.
“I wouldn’t do that,” Dax said, utterly calm considering that thing had teeth that could rip into the both of us, not to mention the claws.
I froze and it stopped growling although its lip was still raised, as if it wanted to make sure I didn’t forget that it had a very large set of fangs and could bite me if I tried anything. It came even closer, its nose almost touching mine, and my pulse went wild. It moved its head lower and I felt its wet nose skim the flesh of my neck—the oh-so-thin layer right over my carotid artery, to be exact.
My breathing completely stopped as I waited for the beast to finish its inspection.
Dax, still lying behind me, didn’t so much as tense. And yes, that made him an ass in my current opinion. Only an ass wouldn’t care about getting mauled and dying as some beast’s midnight snack.
It finally lifted its head. There was a blur as it stood to a towering height and then it was gone before I could even get a good look at its upright form.
I sucked down more air than my lungs could fit, trying to make up for their momentary lack of breathing.
“Holy crapola.” I got up, sleep not an option anymore, and turned on him. “And what is wrong with you? Aren’t you afraid of dying? I thought those things killed?”
“The answer to that would fall under the full disclosure clause.” He yawned and folded his arms behind his head.
“You really aren’t going to tell me why the beast didn’t try to eat us?” I was on the verge of screaming. While I kept an eye out for another one, he was closing his eyes.
“Full disclosure.” Even half awake and with only a partial moon to display it, his You’re the one that started this, not my fault if I’m better at it face was about to make me lose it.
“I think that’s some bullshit you’re just using to keep your secrets.”
“You would know something about that, now wouldn’t you.” He turned on his side and went back to sleep.
Chapter 25
We’d been walking along for a few hours on a not-so-traveled road when five men appeared in the distance. They looked a little rough around the edges, even for the Wilds. If they actually spoke, it still might be an improvement from current company.
“Where are your gloves?” Dax asked, looking at my hands as we saw them approaching us.
Oh shit. I couldn’t believe I’d done it again. An image of them sitting by the creek, where I’d splashed my face with water yesterday, sprang to mind. This was bad. “I left them back by the creek.”
“You. Left. Them. By. The. Creek?” he asked in a tone of disbelief.
“Yes. I. Did.” I mimicked his tone.
“You think this is funny?” he asked.
“No, but there’s nothing I can do about it now. It was a mistake.” I wasn’t going to tell him that I’d only forgotten them because he’d gotten me upset by calling me a Plaguer. A joke had seemed the best course of action. Looking at him now, maybe it hadn’t been? He certainly didn’t deserve an apology.
“Stay behind me and don’t take your hands out of your pockets, even if they want to shake them.”
“Why would they want to shake my hand?”
“Handshakes in the Wilds have two purposes. To make sure you don’t have a gun in your hand and to call you out if there’s a suspicion you’re a Plaguer.”
My hands went deep in my pockets. Enough said.
“And don’t talk.”
I moved closer to his side and said, low enough that there was no way the group could hear me, “I think it looks more suspicious when I say nothing.”
“I don’t care. I’m afraid of the shit that will come out of your mouth and I don’t feel like killing any more people than I’ve already had to. I’ve got a cap on how much blood I like on my hands and I’m currently over quota this year, so please, do me a favor and just shut the fuck up for a little bit?”
“Fine. But why do you think they’ll even bother with us?”
“Because we’re outnumbered and we have something they want.”
I looked at us. “The bike?”
“No. You. Did you see how they were carrying multiple guns on their hips?”
I nodded.
“There’s a price on your head and only bounty hunters carry like that in these parts.”
“A price?”
“From Newco.”
“Do you have a price?”
“No. Just you. They’re telling people that you are a live carrier of the plague.”
“But that’s a lie and they know it,” I said. “I was around people for years and not a single one of them caught anything.”
“They aren’t doing it because they believe it. They’re doing it to drive you out. They also said it was dangerous to approach you and that they should send message and they’ll come and extract you themselves. But bounty hunters won’t do that. Too afraid they’ll get cut out of the money, plague or not.”
The unexpected guest flashed in my mind. Dax had said it was nothing. “That’s what that guy came to tell you at dinner the other night. Were you going to tell me?”
“At some point,” he said, and I wanted to choke the blasé tone right out of his throat. I got it. I’d held back from him and now he was going to make sure I knew the consequences.
“If they attack, throw to kill.”
“Kill?”
“Yes. Kill.”
Conversation halted as the five stopped about eight feet in front of us. Any hope of passing peacefully was shot to hell as they spread out, intentionally blocking the road.
One of the guys stepped forward, placing him slightly ahead of the others. They were all looking down to where my hands were tucked in my pants.
They already knew. It wasn’t like I was hard to ID. Young redheads walking about these parts were probably few. I’d only met one other redhead in my life, and that wasn’t until recently, with Tiffy.
“How do you want to do this?” the guy in the lead asked Dax, not me. Maybe I should’ve been insulted he hadn’t asked me, considering I was the target, but I had bigger worries.
“You don’t want to do this,” Dax said, like we were the ones with the upper hand. At that moment, a couple of things came into question about Dax: his sanity and his ability to count.
“I’m sure I do,” the leader scoffed. I couldn’t really hold it against him. I was near to scoffing.
“I guess it’s going to be the hard way, then.”
I didn’t need an interpreter to know it was time to grab my knife. I’d killed a Dark Walker and a pretend assassin. I’d never killed a human before and I wasn’t sure I had a taste for it. Didn’t seem like I was going to have a choice, since that’s all that was on the menu today. I’d die fighting before I let anyone take me back to Newco.
Their guns were drawn and bullets starting whizzing past me. I heard movement to my left but I ke
pt my eyes trained on the one guy coming for me. I didn’t want to see Dax lying on the ground dead. I didn’t know what would happen to me if I did. I couldn’t look because if I saw it, it was real. It couldn’t be real. Not if I wanted to keep my shit together.
I grabbed the knife from my boot but was afraid to throw it, not sure if I was going to be deadly accurate or lose my one weapon in the effort.
I heard shuffling to my side again and couldn’t imagine what they were doing to Dax’s poor body, but I was running out of time. I had to get away from here before all their attention was back on me. I wasn’t going to win in close combat. The guy coming at me wasn’t as big as Dax but he looked a lot stronger than me. His eyes shot to my left; he probably wanted to join in on the fight before it ended, since from the sounds, the beating was almost over. It was enough to send me over the top. I threw the knife at him and it found its home effortlessly in the center of the guy’s chest.
The guy fell instantly. I needed to make a run for it, like this very second, but I couldn’t stop myself from one last glimpse. I needed to know Dax was dead and not being tortured somehow.
There were four bodies dead on the ground and Dax standing there, watching me.
“You’re alive.” I tried to hide the relief that welled in me. For the second time in days, I felt my eyes burning. It was in that second that I knew how much I was starting to rely upon him to watch my back, like we were partners or something. I’d expected him to get us out of this, and I’d felt panic over him dying. He was Dax; he couldn’t die, and he hadn’t.
But for that short moment, I’d thought he had and it had rocked my world. I was the one who was strong for everyone else. I wasn’t supposed to be leaning. I was the support.
He looked at my victim lying dead on the ground. “You weren’t horrible but you waited too long,” Dax said, as he walked over and retrieved my knife from the corpse, stopping only to clean the blood off on the guy’s clothing. “You need practice. You can’t hesitate, especially once you’re on your own. You’re in the Wilds now, Dal. It’s kill or be killed out here. When you fight, it’s to the death and you don’t start shit you aren’t willing to finish. If you’re soft, you’re dead.”
He walked back to me and handed me the knife and then went to look over the other bodies as he asked, “What’s wrong? Reality not as charming as it seemed in your books?”
Yes, killing the guy was upsetting, enough that I didn’t want to look at the body, but that wasn’t why I was speechless. It was him. He was pissing me off. First I think he’s dead. Then I don’t get a chance to reset my internal compass back to north and get everything straight before he’s complaining about how I’d taken too long to kill the guy.
“Not everyone is tough all the time.” I didn’t know why, but I resented him right now. It annoyed me that he always thought he was right, and it bugged me even worse that most of the time he actually was. But I had him on this point, and I knew it. “Not everyone is a machine like you.” Some people even care when they think people die and might need a second, but I wasn’t going to tell him that person was me in this moment.
He stood up from where he’d been squatting next to a body, ice-cold Dax back in place. “You have to be. You’re going to be on your own. You don’t have the luxury of emotions.”
I wanted to be tough, not depend on anyone. But he was still annoying me. “I’m not going to be alone. I’ll have my friends with me. We’ll depend on each other.” Or they’d mostly depend on me, but so what.
“I hope that works out for you,” he said in a tone of voice that drove me crazy, like he knew all the secrets to the universe, and I was just a dumb, sheltered idiot.
“What about Becca? She went out on her own, and she wasn’t a machine.”
“She wanted to leave. I’m not a jailor—most of the time. She got where she was going. What happens after that isn’t on me.” He walked over to the bike, done with the bodies. “People are who they are. You can’t make someone fundamentally different.”
He grabbed the handlebars and started walking while I remembered the last argument I’d heard him have with Becca and wondered who he was really talking about, him or her.
I had a long time to wonder, since it took us about four more hours to walk home. By time I saw the gates, all I wanted was some of Fudge’s food and to curl up in bed and put the past two days behind me.
That wasn’t how it was going to happen, though. It was stupid of me, but for some reason, when we got back, I thought there wouldn’t be any ramifications.
Dax’s first words to the guy when he opened up the gate were, “You let her leave this place without my say-so and it’s your ass. Tell the rest of the crew.” He didn’t wait for a reply from the gate guy or myself, simply continued to the house.
“What is that about?” I asked, half yelling and forcing my exhausted body to catch back up to him after I’d stalled in shock.
“You need me to translate?” he asked, not bothering to stop in his stride.
“That’s bullshit.”
“No. That’s your new reality until you give me a Dark Walker.”
I stopped chasing him and yelled, “What about ‘I’m not a jailor?’”
“I’m not, ‘most of the time.’” He walked around to the back of the house, leaving me standing alone in the middle of the front lawn.
Chapter 26
No one would let me out the next day, not alone, not with Bookie. I was officially on lockdown, and I didn’t have time for this bullshit. Dax wasn’t even around to go hunt Dark Walkers, so what was the point? I was wasting valuable hours for no reason. Bookie and I still needed to try and find books in the library so we could come up with detailed plans of how many explosives we’d need to blow through cement. Neither of us knew what kind we had or exactly how strong, how many to set off and where. The questions seemed endless. But instead of doing any of those worthy things, I was sitting in my room, basically grounded like a child.
When I did get out again, there was a whole new issue. Bounty hunters. I had a price on my head. In one strange and overly dramatic way, it was kind of cool. It was just like some of my characters. I wondered if I had a poster, too.
In a real-life sort of way, it sucked the big one. I toyed with a lock of too-bright hair. It was like a beacon.
Maybe there were some things I could do while I was stuck here.
I went downstairs and saw Fudge in the kitchen.
“I need to borrow a couple of things if you don’t mind.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Borrow or keep?”
I knew she was thinking of the knife, which I returned every evening and re-borrowed every morning.
“Borrow-ish?”
She rolled her eyes. “What do you need?” she asked as she continued to mix some dark brown concoction, which may or may not have been fudge. I’d recently found out her real name was Mary. She got the nickname Fudge because she liked to make it once a month. I’d never had it myself, so I was hoping that’s what she was about.
I rattled off my list and she directed me to the various cabinets to find the items. Luckily, there was coffee in abundance. She had a nice stash of rags and she warned me not to drink too much when I took the small bottle of whiskey for good measure. Living in the well-stocked main house had some perks.
“What are you up to?” Her mixing arm stopped mid-motion as she took in my small collection.
“Nothing much.” I smiled and hightailed it out of there.
* * *
“What did you do to your hair? It’s darker.”
Dax’s voice startled me a few hours later. His timing was the pits. I hadn’t heard the door open, and he didn’t knock.
“Thought it might be a good idea.” I hadn’t managed to get my hair to the brown I’d hoped, but at least it was more auburn now than bright red. There were limits even to the miracle of coffee.
“It was,” he said as I could hear him take a couple more steps into the room.
“Are you dripping blood?”
I kept my back to him, holding the rag to the still bleeding hand. I looked down to see a small puddle had formed in between my feet. “It does look that way.”
I turned around, keeping the rag pressed to my skin, figuring the cat was out of the bag. “A brand leaves no doubt. A scar leaves them guessing. I should’ve done it before now.”
“Let me see it.”
“It’s fine.” I didn’t need someone to care for me. I’d cared for myself well enough for a long time. Besides, it was better now, other than the blood and some pain and the almost disgusting flap of skin I’d sliced off… Blah, blah, blah; it wasn’t worth making a big thing over it.
He shrugged. “Fine, handle it yourself.” He walked over to the window seat and made himself comfortable, watching me with a go ahead, you said you had this under control look on his face.
“What is it with you and the faces lately?” I shot at him, annoyed that he was insisting on sitting here and watching me. “I either get no emotion or the most obnoxious expressions known to man.”
The bastard laughed at me.
“No, you and your gloating I know it all expressions are not funny.”
He laughed harder. Damn if the sound of it didn’t shoot right inside me and start churning stuff around, even as annoyed as I was with him. Now not only would he not leave my room, I was going to be his evening’s entertainment.
I grabbed one of the longer strips of rags and tried to wind it around my hand but I couldn’t get it tight enough to do any good, even when I tried to stick one end underneath my chin.
“You don’t have that many outfits. I’d think you wouldn’t want to bleed on the ones you do have,” he said from his comfortable perch.
I looked down and saw a speck of blood that had already stained the dark pants. Bloodstains wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, but I would’ve preferred they were my enemies’, not my own.
The Wilds Page 18