by S. C. Green
“—they’ve got the only food left in this fucking city, and it’s a hell of a lot safer behind those walls than it is here. Or are you too besotted to see that?” Harriet shouted.
“Sydney has nothing to do with this,” Alain hissed.
“Oh yeah? Then why are we all slumming it in this rat-infested shithole?”
Ouch. That stung. My flat may not have been tidy, but considering there had been no power, running water, or other amenities available for years, I thought the place was in pretty decent shape. Plus, there were hardly any rats, which was a pity. Infested, my ass.
“I’m not sending May back there,” Alain said, his voice quiet but firm. “Not even with all the firepower in the city.”
The Compound. I realised Harriet was talking about the old Reaper stronghold. Why on earth did she want to go there, given everything that had happened to May behind those walls?
“I’m old enough to decide for myself,” May piped up, touching her hand to Harriet’s shoulder. “And I want to go with Harriet.”
“Why? How do you even know this girl?” Alain demanded. “Why did you never tell me about her?”
No, Alain. I winced. Wrong question.
“Are you kidding?” May yelled. “Can you even hear yourself right now? How could I tell you something like this? You thought I’d marry Dorien, who was a horrible villain and you didn’t even see it. You wanted me to have the happy family you never got to have. It took me years to get my father back after Mum left, and I wasn’t going to risk losing you again just because I’m gay!”
“That’s not true.” Alain’s eyes darkened. “I would’ve supported you—”
“It’s completely true, and it has nothing to do with your support. You aren’t over Mum. You’ve never gotten over her. Even now you’re with Syd, I can still see the shadow of her behind your eyes. She haunts you, and you can’t see past her, to what’s in front of you now. I knew that if you saw me like this, I wouldn’t be your little girl anymore, and that was going to break you.”
“That’s enough!” Alain yelled. “You’re still my daughter. You’re not supposed to decide what I do and do not know.”
“I’m nearly eighteen,” May shot back, her long fingers curling into her palms. “Four more days and I’m officially of age. It’s time I flew away from the nest.”
“You’re not eighteen yet.” Alain took Diana’s beloved kitten from his shoulder and placed him on my sagging sofa. “And you are not going back to the Compound.”
Seeing them fight like this, like a typical teenager and her father, sent a sharp, renewed pang of grief through my chest. I removed my palm from the wood and pressed it against my heart. Diana would never get to be a teenager. She’d never get to experience her first love, to find herself in that way, to resent me for doing everything wrong, to assert her independence, as May was trying to do.
I sucked in a breath. I wouldn’t let the grief take me, not right now. There were things to do. I placed my hand back on the door, and Alain, May, and Harriet came into view once more.
“I don’t care how much food they have or how certain you are that I could convince them to follow me instead,” Alain said. “It’s too much of a risk, and I don’t want anyone to follow me.”
“What do you propose we do, then?” Harriet fumed. “I’ve got twenty-two whores in need of food, and the last garden in the Rim is under the control of the Dimitri gang.”
“You don’t know that.”
“That’s what we’re trying to tell you!” May yelled. “We were just there. The gang have been busy while we’ve been holed up in the Compound. They’ve piled everything they could find into a huge storehouse over on Peach Street. The whole place is heavily guarded.”
Peach Street Gardens. There was a huge black-market garden on top of that warehouse. If the Dimitri gang had control of that, they would likely soon starve out most other people in the city.
“You don’t even have to come with us to the Compound,” Harriet said, her voice even. “It was just an idea. With May’s help, my girls can sneak in and rob a few Reapers much easier than we can storm through twenty armed men on Peach Street, which is our only other option, as far as I see it.”
“With Dorien and several of his followers dead, the place will be in utter confusion,” May said. “Now is our chance. If we’re not careful, we’re going to be caught in a war between the gangs and the Reapers for what little is left. When that war begins, I’d rather the Reapers be on our side.”
“We’re not leaving Sydney.” Alain’s ice-blue eyes flashed. “She needs us right now, and that should be more important than this ridiculous crusade—”
I yanked the door back, enjoying the satisfying slam as the wood hit the wall behind. Everyone in the room jumped.
“I’m standing right here,” I said. “And I’d like to remind you all that you are in my house, eating my rats, and yelling loud enough to attract unwanted attention. So I’m going to say some shit, and then we’re not going to talk about this anymore, okay?”
“Sydney...” Alain started toward me, but I held up my hand.
“My turn to talk now. In this particular case, I happen to agree with the girls. Finding and securing a food source has to be our top priority.”
“But...” Alain started.
I fixed him with an evil stare. “However right they are, May, you should not talk to your father like that. And you should never, ever hide things from people you love. Otherwise, you rob them of the chance to show you how deep their love goes.”
May stared at me with stony eyes so much darker than her dad’s, her arms folded across her chest.
“I don’t want to hear any more bickering, especially not in this house. Aside from the fact these walls aren’t exactly the Kremlin, and your voices carry, you disrespect”--my voice caught--“Diana’s memory by bringing this shit here.”
“I’m sorry—” May choked out, but I held up a hand to silence her.
“I take it you have another idea?” Harriet demanded.
I shot her a grateful glance as I composed myself again. “If what you say is true, and the Dimitri gangs have mobilised on Peach, then that means they won’t just have the garden, but the Otto store, too.”
“What’s that?” Harriet asked.
“Some guy named Otto found a room stacked with beans in the basement of his apartment building,” I explained. “Nothing else, just cans and cans of beans. The first beans came on the black market about six months ago. He’s only two streets over from Peach, so my guess is he’s either joined forces with the Dimitris, or they will take him by force.”
“So no beans for us,” May said glumly.
“Could there be other sources of food in the Rim?” Harriet asked. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been on the streets. Us whores were fed a meat broth, but I’m going to guess we don’t have access to the Dimitri pig farm, either.”
“There’s another large garden in Trident Quarter.” I pointed south. “It’s quite a walk that way and probably not worthwhile looking at. The owners of that one had strong ties to the Spinaldi gang. The only other place I know of is a small garden on Princess Street, right on the edge of the dome. It’s tiny, so he probably doesn’t have anything left.”
“Which gang runs that one?”
“Oh, gangs won’t touch Princess Garden. Sharky – that’s the old man who tends the garden – has his ways of keeping them away.”
Alain narrowed his eyes. “What ways?”
“Pookie.”
“What’s a Pookie?”
“Sharky’s pet tiger.”
May’s eyebrows shot upward. “You’re kidding.”
“Oh, I wish.” I lifted the side of my T-shirt and showed them a long scar running up my side. Alain’s face paled. “I got that last time I visited Princess Gardens. Sharky said Pookie was just trying to play with me.”
“And what makes you think this guy will take kindly to us?” Harriet demanded. “I don’
t intend to survive the wraith only to end up as a tiger’s dinner.”
“Sharky owes me a favour. He never paid me for a bottle of whisky I got out of the Hub for him.”
“I’m not so worried about Sharky.” Alain stared at the scar, his jaw set with determination. Realising that he was also staring at my stomach, within which dwelled a perfect tiny baby whom he desperately didn’t want to be eaten by a tiger, I lowered my shirt.
“What if the gangs got to this guy, too?” he asked. “We could be walking into a death trap.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it. Fear of Pookie runs pretty deep. What’s our other option, anyway? Go back to the Compound? No, thank you. I’ve got more than enough Reapers on my hands as it is.”
“Fine. But you should stay here.” Alain eyed my stomach.
“I can’t.” I gestured to my side again. “I’m the only one who’s on friendly terms with Pookie.”
“Friendly?” Alain’s face darkened, but he knew he wouldn’t win this argument. Baby or no baby, we had to eat. And if that meant we had to get a crazy old man and his tiger on our side, then I wasn’t about to sit at home and let them take care of it.
“Fine,” he said through gritted teeth. “But you’re staying behind all of us. And we’re taking Harriet’s two girls, for backup. I don’t want you or our child anywhere near that tiger, do you understand?”
We’d just destroyed more than a hundred undead soul-suckers, but now that I was pregnant, you put me in front of one measly tiger, and suddenly I couldn’t defend myself. Yeah, I understood perfectly.
I grinned. I knew where Alain was coming from, too. “As you wish.” I kissed him on the cheek, hoping to soften him, but there was no softening the protectiveness of a father. I definitely couldn’t blame him.
However, I knew Pookie, sort of, and right now not getting food was a greater danger to our baby than a giant, hopefully playful tiger.
So off we went, down the stairs and out into the street. I marched ahead, followed by two ravens soaring behind and three leather-clad chicks carrying assault rifles. I felt like the Pied Piper if he’d accidentally taken LSD.
I just hoped I wasn’t leading them to their doom.
4
Raine
“Ow, fuck.” Jack groaned from the backseat, his hands clamped around his leg and his head lolling against the headrest. “It burns.”
The bullet in his thigh was a problem I hadn’t anticipated. Jack desperately needed medical attention. His face had turned pale as the adrenaline wore off and the pain set in. His chin kept falling against his chest, his breath coming out in short, sharp gasps.
We’d already wasted precious minutes pulling over to the roadside. But I needed to fashion a splint from a crowbar in the back of the truck and a strip of cloth cut from the hem of my coat. I’d torn off another strip and wrapped it around his leg to help stop the bleeding, then I’d balled up his blood-soaked jacket and made him hold that against the wound.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered as I slipped into the driver’s seat again. “We can’t stay here. This is going to hurt. A lot.”
Luckily, the trace Jack had placed on that other car had sent our pursuers screaming down a different highway, but we still needed to put as much distance between us and them as possible. Who knew how long it would be before they were on our tail for real?
I careened through the maze of debris and overturned cars, desperate to get back to the station. We had plenty of medical supplies I could use there. My stomach churned at the thought of what I might have to do to Jack, but I would have to deal with my aversion to blood. Jack needed me, and I needed him no matter how much I told myself I didn’t.
From the passenger seat, Red watched me with his unblinking, inhuman blue eyes. I wasn’t sure exactly how he was still in the car with us. Nothing was solid to him, so how was he sitting beside me? He hovered a few inches above the seat, as though physics really did anchor him there. Wraith physiology had been one of my areas of study, but even now it still had me stumped.
“That lead plum’ll kill your friend ‘afore the day is high,” Red said. “I could take him now, ussse his energy to help you.”
“That’s not going to happen,” I said. “And I don’t want to hear you mention it again. Is that clear?”
He nodded. “Asss you wisssh.”
“Incidentally, and I only want to know this for scientific curiosity, how could you use his energy to help me?”
“I could inject it into the engine. The vehicle would travel much fassster.”
“Could you now.” That was news to me, and I knew most everything there was to know about wraith physiology. The wraith functioned via energy transference. They needed energy from living things to exist, hence the need to husk. But I didn’t know they could transform that power into other forms of energy. Interesting.
“I’ve misssed talking to you, Raine.”
Red’s words made my chest ache, and a lump rose in my throat. Red had remained behind the grey walls of his cage the whole time he’d been my test subject. We’d communicated through the comm system installed in the pods. Red was the only wraith who had ever spoken. The others only hissed. I’d never told anyone about him speaking, and I never would.
I’d been locked in the basement with Red for long, lonely shifts. We used to talk about the world, the wraith, and much happier topics: cheesesteaks, campfires, May, and Annabelle. Talking to Red had comforted me. I liked his faux cowboy drawl. As I drove, I remembered.
After the Sunn chemical plant spill, Red listened to news of the wraith with interest. He refused to give me any more information that might help us stop the wraith. “They’ll beef me if they knew,” he said.
I had to look up the term in the Old West dictionary I’d brought for communicating with Red. It meant he’d be killed.
He wasn’t wrong. Prior to the Sunn chemical disaster, he’d been one of only a handful of wraith discovered walking the earth, and he’d been somewhat cooperative, not seeing much need to continue to exist trapped inside a tube. Now, suddenly, there were hundreds of others, and his Annabelle could be one of them. His love for her, his wish to be with her again, even as ghouls, gave him a desire to continue to exist.
I’d heard Arnold discussing containment plans for the city. I’d promised Red I’d try to get him moved inside. It made sense to throw the wraith we had in with all the others. All the information we’d gathered hadn’t got us any closer to understanding or destroying them, and having them at the Institute made many government officials nervous, especially given the increasing tensions between them and the Reapers.
Despite this, Arnold laughed when I made the request to transfer Red and the others. “I’m not derailing a complex and vital project to accommodate the wraith. Besides, we haven’t yet completed work on specimen 13. We’re not in the habit of letting test subjects float free.”
Arnold never called the wraith by their names, even though we knew them. To him, they were dead as dormice.
I knew nothing about what the government was planning to do, only that a date had been set for some kind of action against the wraith in the city. The Compound – where Alain and May and I lived – was miles from the cemetery, all the way on the other side of the city, so I never thought we were in any danger. The day of the action, I wasn’t scheduled to go in to the Institute. I was sitting with May – who hadn’t been feeling well – in her small quarters, reading to her from The Hobbit, when my phone rang.
“Raine.” It was Arnold, and his voice held a stern edge. “I need you to come into the office.”
I’d been up for hours the previous night helping to reap souls lost in the recent wraith attacks. When I’d returned, Alain and I had a huge fight, and I’d managed to steal only a couple of hours of sleep on an uncomfortable cot in May’s room. My eyelids were barely open. There was no way I was leaving the Compound.
“Sorry. My kid is sick. You’ll have to find someone else.”
“This is
non-negotiable. There’s been an emergency.”
“Arnold. I can’t. I can barely keep my eyes open—”
“Raine.” Arnold’s voice went cold. “I am not kidding around here. We’ve found out what you’ve been hiding from us – that specimen 13 is talking. You need to be here now, or your family will be in danger.”
His voice cut deep. I closed the book and stood, leaving May’s side to stand beside the window. I glanced down on the courtyard below, empty now except for Malcolm and Lucien, their heads bent together in contemplative thought.
I whispered my next words into the phone. “How does my going into the office or not have any impact on my family? Is this a threat?”
“It’s more than a threat. It’s an order. I’m simply making sure you comply. Are you coming, or do I have to send a team to come get you?”
My stomach dropped into my feet. I glanced back over to the bed where May peeked out from a pile of blankets, her dark eyes wide and curious. “Like I said, May is sick. I’ll have to bring her with me.”
“No. This is very important. You are to come alone.”
I sighed. My head throbbed from lack of sleep. This wasn’t the first time Arnold had threatened my family in order to get his way. Government workers felt they could treat Reapers however they liked. We were little more than slaves. I longed to tell Arnold where to shove it, but I had a horrible feeling he had the means to make good on his threats. Besides, I didn’t like the harsh, cold tone in his voice.
“Fine.”
“You’re coming?” He sounded oddly stiff.
“As soon as I can find someone to watch May.”
“Call me when you hit the motorway.”
I should have seen through it. I should have realised it was a ploy to get me out of the city, to separate me from my biggest distraction – my family. But I’d been too disturbed by the harshness in Arnold’s tone, too wracked with fear for May’s life, too distracted by my fight with Alain and the weariness that leached into my bones that I’d left her in the care of Dorien, hopped in my car, and drove out of the city. I’d been halfway to New Vegas when I’d seen the dome fly overhead, carried by an escort of bombers. Instantly understanding, I yanked the wheel around and drove back as fast as I could. But not fast enough. I watched, completely helpless, as the dome came down, the edges crushing buildings and buckling cars. A great cloud of dust and debris spewed into the air, and my daughter and lover were gone forever.