“Children shouldn’t play on ice. They’re stupid and fragile.”
“Well put. And the other night at the Nine Lives? I was stupid. The ice was thin, I fell through, and you pulled me out. Maybe Naomi’s right and I should just stick with her from now on.”
“No. You’re not her.”
“Then what do you suggest?”
“Break the rules better.” Ryn thought on it a moment. “Whether you break or obey a rule, if you don’t understand the rule, you’re not a person. You’re a…” She had no word for it. “A thing. A thing that only does what it’s allowed. Not free. A…”
“A cog. Like in a machine?”
“Yes. That. A working cog is better than a broken one, but still just a cog.” Ryn glanced at Denise. “Break a rule because you understand it, though, and you are no longer a cog. You become a god.”
“O-kay.” She seemed to suck on the idea. “What do you call it when you’re halfway between a cog and god?”
“Humanity.”
Denise nodded. “Want to know something about Naomi?”
Always. She was greedy for more, for anything, and that terrified her.
“When she came to my hospital room, I expected the most elaborate ‘I told you so’ of all time. Never happened. There’s hugging and crying, but no lecture. I even tried, masochist that I am, to bait her. ‘Oh Naomi, If only I’d listened to you from the start.’
“She doesn’t nibble. She says: ‘No. If only those men hadn’t tried to rape you. If only the world weren’t full of scumbags ready to pounce on the first sign of weakness.’ I don’t think there’s anything evil in her. You need to understand that about her—that, and even after she said those things to me, the hypocrite blames herself for the whole night.”
Ryn frowned.
“Yeah, and girls like that—who blame themselves first—they don’t do well in relationships with selfish people. They don’t know what they’re owed. They get hurt and then blame themselves for standing in the way of his fist. She’s a good kid, but goodness makes you vulnerable.”
Now Ryn understood. “So you will protect her.” From me. The monster.
“Oh yes.” Denise leaned in. “But I’m not telling you to scram; I’m telling you not to hurt her. My best friend is precious fucking treasure. Remember that.” Tilting back to her original posture, she added, “Not that you have a shot, because if she were gay she’d have obviously hit on me by now.” Clearing her throat, she added, “But then again…”
Ryn paid close attention.
“Naomi’s good with people and usually sees straight through them. Understands things she shouldn’t, weird things, things a princess shouldn’t understand. Told me she knew right away at the food court that you’d seen ‘violence.’ How does a senator’s daughter from the Gardens possibly intuit that? But she did.” Denise shrugged. “Except there’s a blind spot when it comes to… a lot of you-related things. You confuse her, you drive her up the wall; she talks about you constantly. You frustrate her.”
Ryn scowled, as none of that sounded remotely good.
“Oh, you don’t think that’s good news? It is. I told you once, Naomi has her little ten-year plan. Maybe she doesn’t get you because you don’t fit. You’re not from her world. You’re the thing she never expected.” Denise stretched, positioning herself to skate away. “Someday she’ll figure it out, though. It’s going to be awkward and, I admit, I really want to see her face if you kiss her. It’ll be a disaster—at best, a beautiful disaster.”
“I don’t kiss,” Ryn growled.
“God, you’re adorable.” Denise pitched her voice into a low purr. “Imagine that soft mouth getting closer to yours—her breath all aflutter; her never-been-kissed eyes staring back at you.”
The magic of Naomi’s basilisk stare worked even from memory, a surge of prickles covering every inch of Ryn. Her whole body tightened in response. “Stop it,” she snarled.
“Horatio’s going to kiss her if you don’t.”
Ryn liked that even less, the way it emptied her of some hope that had been quietly mounting. She leveled a warning glare at Denise, who she knew was toying with her.
“Though he doesn’t know Naomi’s dirty little secret.”
Ryn narrowed her eyes, resigned to wait.
“No one’s ever gotten her flowers. The boys at Madison are too chicken. A girl will always remember the first boy who gets her flowers. Even if that boy’s a girl.”
Then Ryn felt it like a change in air pressure: Something is wrong. Very wrong. Her teeth ached and she wanted—no, needed—to find Naomi.
Cutting her way across the ice, she darted for the auburn-haired girl, who drifted back toward Ryn from the concession line, smiling and unaware of what was on its way.
Not even Ryn knew what—only that it was close.
~*~
When Casper’s crosshairs first touched Naomi Bradford’s chest, the tiny demon swerved into his scope and matched his target’s pace exactly. His shaking hands faltered; it was the guardian. The benefactors had told him the Antichrist had a guardian. I must avoid her. She is Death.
Each time his crosshairs drifted close to Naomi Bradford, the demon’s gaze would pivot and scan the crowd, sometimes the building sides too, her attention dancing closer and closer to him.
She senses me, he realized, an ice-water chill radiating from his heart. The demon’s proof of it—no one’s that sharp, not without a piece of Hell on her side. It’s true, then. Every word is true.
The benefactors had put bait out for the demon, so he waited. His thumb clicked off the safety and he tried not to think of his daughter.
~*~
Naomi coasted along with two white styrofoam cups in hand. “Wow, did you miss me already?”
Ryn took her elbow and steered her through the crowd, toward a corner, where the hairs on her neck relaxed. “Here. Stand here.”
“Okay, weirdo.” There was amusement in Naomi’s tone.
Ryn wheeled and sought her foe. She tasted him now. Mortal.
The asura were using mortals.
~*~
“Shit.” Casper lowered the rifle’s barrel. The guardian demon had taken Naomi Bradford to a part of the rink blocked by trees and a building corner. I wasn’t fast enough. I hesitated, and now the world’s fucked.
He took a finishing pull on his cigarette before grinding it out on the desk. Stop freaking out—it’s not over. He wiped a sleeve across his sweaty face and scrounged for his phone, texting the benefactors.
A moment later, they replied: “Wait for the bait to do its job.”
Casper settled behind his scope and pushed the butt of the cigarette into his ear to muffle the report of a shot he still intended to take. He imagined he was in one of those yoga poses the counselor had told him was “as good as a beer,” which was bullshit—but he couldn’t drink a beer, so he went through the poses in his mind’s eye from first to last, until his heartbeat slowed enough to straighten the bullet’s path.
~*~
“Looked like you and Denise had one very intense discussion.” Naomi settled into the wall, passing a steaming cup of dark liquid to Ryn. “What about?”
“Nothing.” With her intuition as guide, Ryn now guessed a sniper. She had him triangulated, and Naomi tucked safely away.
“So you talked about me.” Naomi held her cup between both hands, steam rising to touch her pretty face.
The heat from Ryn’s own cup calmed her riotous pulse and she inhaled the savory aroma of cocoa bean and sugar blended together. She is safe for now. “How do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Know things—things I haven’t told you.”
“People talk in layers.” Naomi sipped, her mouth a soft pink contrast to her pale skin. Her lips were sensitive to the heat, fascinating in how gingerly she applied them to the rim. “What we say is only the top layer. Guess I’m more interested in the stuff underneath.” She looked at Ryn then, in a curious way that
made the monster realize she’d been staring too hard.
She snapped her gaze down and shielded herself by drinking from her own cup.
Something happened in Ryn’s mouth that had never happened before and her body responded with a shudder. She drank again, more deeply, tipping the cup back as sweet, rich flavor coated her insides. “What is this?” Witchcraft, surely.
“You’ve never had chocolate? Hey! Careful, you’ll burn yourself!”
Ryn finished it. “That…” She inhaled the inside of the empty cup, eyes shut. “That is the best thing I’ve ever had.”
Naomi shook her head in amazement. “Welcome to civilization. You seriously don’t have chocolate where you’re from?”
“Seen it before. Smelled it.” But it had been foreign and different. “I prefer the old things.”
Naomi eyed the emptied cup. “Except for chocolate and ice skating, apparently.”
And you.
“Want me to grab you another?”
Ryn shook her head hard. No. Stay and do not move. “The memory suffices.” The heat was still in her center, the taste on her lips.
“What color are your eyes?” Naomi asked, leaning abruptly closer.
Ryn leaned away. “Why?”
“I’m trying to imagine you without your glasses.”
“Why?”
“Humor me.”
Ryn fidgeted, feeling somehow chased; more perversely, as though she wanted to be caught. “My irises are blue.”
“And your glasses protect you, don’t they?”
“How did you know?”
Naomi grinned. “Layers, remember?” Then she grew more serious. “I get the feeling you hide a lot—that you have to, to blend in. If you ever want to stop hiding from me, though… I’d like that.”
Ryn had no answer to give. As powerful as Naomi’s stare was, Ryn’s eyes contained the dark secret of the universe—that storybook nightmares were real and made flesh and walked hungry through the world. If she tore off her person mask, everything would change.
“Did someone scar your eyes?”
My eyes would scar you.
Restless, Naomi finished her hot chocolate. “I guess it was really bad where you’re from.”
“It’s bad here.” Ryn didn’t understand why no one saw that. “Men tried to rape your friend. Others torment a girl in my school for mating too many males; they sneer at me for mating none at all. Another mated a girl too small to stop him, until she killed herself. Where I am from, predators are not so cruel.” Or if they were, they met her and didn’t remain predators for long.
Naomi’s face went lax, as though Ryn’s words knocked all the feelings out of her. “What about you? Did someone—”
A snarl peeled the corner of Ryn’s mouth, but she twisted her face from Naomi to disguise her fangs, and perhaps a corner of a dark memory buried now for eighteen months. “No.”
Naomi made no answer and that weighed heavily on Ryn. She felt exposed, and Naomi didn’t rush in with a new topic.
It reminded her of the child predator and she glanced at the bench.
It was vacant. Ryn jolted in that direction. “Stay here.”
“What? Why?”
“Do not move.” Ryn skated into the crowd and scanned it. Bodies crisscrossed her field of vision, but she let the sound, scent, the heartbeats and the hormonal odors traffic through her brain. She skated for the bench and then past it, following a ribbon of chemical arousal.
She realized Naomi hadn’t listened. The warm-hearted female pursued, straight into the path of danger. “No.” Ryn pivoted in a spray of ice flakes, terror rolling through her as Naomi approached her, a confused smile on her face, as if to ask, What? Why do you look so frightened?
~*~
The demon took the bait. The benefactors’ other man on the ground—the pervert Casper wished he could shoot instead—drew the guardian away and lured out the Bradford girl. He made the final adjustment to his scope for the crosswind.
Five hundred yards. Ten-mile-per-hour crosswind, partly blocked by buildings. To the right of her heart. Past her guardian demon. Not impossible, but…
He should have asked for a larger rifle.
What if I miss? The crowd…
Casper prayed to God that he didn’t kill a child.
His crosshairs stroked Naomi Bradford’s slender throat, then dipped to her heart.
“Namaste.” He fired.
~*~
Ryn gripped Naomi’s arm and tugged her close. She spun and let the bullet strike the cup of her hand. The only sound was a muffled crack five hundred yards away that the humans didn’t hear, a zip, and the soft spank of jacketed lead against her unbreakable palm. She held the hot slug and steered Naomi through the crowd.
“Hey, easy,” Naomi said, shrugging off Ryn’s hand. “Your grip’s like iron.”
She kept between the distant window and Naomi, but the danger had abated—the danger to Naomi, at least. She still smelled the child predator.
~*~
Her hand. Casper lifted his face from the rifle. She caught the bullet. In her hand. She didn’t even know where I was until I fired. How could anything move like that?
He slid off the desk and ripped his rifle’s carrying pack open. One-handed, he texted, “It’s over. Guardian spotted me. Bugging out. Will try again later.”
And then: “DEFINITELY need bigger gun.”
At least the demon will eat the pervert, he decided.
~*~
They wove through the crowd, Ryn only as far in the lead as she dared with a shooter still out there, albeit no longer at the open window.
Through the shifting skaters, she spotted the predator. His wide bottom and tapered shoulders made him an ungainly triangle, and he chatted with a dark-skinned child perched on the rink’s wall, her hot chocolate held between two blue mittens. The child kicked her feet playfully. When the predator brushed her hair, Ryn tasted copper from her own bitten lip.
She scraped to a stop and dusted his ankles with ice, glaring up at him, carefully considering her options. Do not break him in front of the child. Unless you must.
Naomi hit the wall behind her, scooting nearer with one hand on the rail. “Hello,” she said to the child before Ryn could challenge the predator to battle. “Is this your daddy?”
“No, I’m lost,” the girl announced, more from excitement than fear. “This is Dylan. He had an extra hot chocolate.”
“That’s right.” Dylan’s smile was wrong. Ryn could only tell because, unlike Naomi’s, it never touched the other parts of his face.
“Well, my name is Naomi. This is my friend Ryn. Ryn is really good at finding people. I’ll bet she could help you find your mommy or daddy.”
“But I get to help, right?” the girl asked. “I’m Amanda.” She waved at Ryn.
Ryn didn’t know what to say or do around children. They were stuck in between being monkeys and people. She glanced up at Dylan, whom she knew precisely what to do with.
Naomi skirted around him, though, and interposed herself between Dylan and Amanda, catching the predator’s gaze with her own. “Nice to meet you too. Naomi Bradford.”
“Dylan,” he said, his voice too soft.
“Dylan what?” Naomi’s face lit with cheer and Ryn instantly wanted to break one of Dylan’s legs and drag Naomi out of his orbit.
“Um. Dylan Crane.”
“Give me just one second, Dylan.” Naomi tapped on her phone, glanced over at the child, and added, “That’s a cute jacket, Amanda. Where’d you get it?”
“Santa,” she said.
“He did a good job with that.” Her finger flicked the screen.
“Santa is way better at picking out clothes than Daddy. I think Santa’s a girl. She picks clothes like Mommy.”
“Dylan Crane.” Naomi skimmed her screen. “You live over on Akron Avenue?”
“Um.” Dylan rubbed the back of his scalp and looked all around him.
“Because this website says
you live there.” She presented her phone to Dylan. Ryn could see his picture, address, and a block of bulleted text on the website.
“Hey. I’m allowed to be here,” he said defensively.
“Sure. But maybe your parole officer doesn’t want you buying hot chocolate for young girls?”
“I was just helping. I’m leaving anyway.” He skated away, stumbling on his way toward the exit.
“Why’s Dylan scared?” Amanda asked.
“You shouldn’t talk to strangers.” Naomi helped Amanda to the ice and took her hand. They skated into the circuit of people, scanning for her parents.
“You’re strangers,” Amanda said.
“True. Don’t trust us. We’re probably Russian spies.” Then, in Russian, she said, “I’m really glad my friend spotted you. I don’t think you understand the trouble you were in, little one.”
“She does not,” Ryn said, also in Russian. Something about what Ryn said startled Naomi and Ryn wondered if it was offensive.
“You don’t look like spies,” Amanda said.
“That’s what makes us such good spies.” Naomi winked.
“Da.” Lying to children was actually kind of amusing, since they would believe anything, even from Ryn. Maybe that was why humans liked them.
“Was Dylan bad?” Amanda asked.
“Yes,” Naomi said.
“He didn’t seem bad. He was nice.”
Naomi’s tone became serious. “That’s why he was so good at being a bad man.”
They found a middle-aged man and woman in the midst of a frantic search through the crowd of children at the concession stand. Naomi guided Amanda over. The father drew his girl into a crushing embrace, the mother hugging Naomi. After they spoke a moment, Naomi showed them her phone and they went wide-eyed. The woman cried. The man mashed numbers into his phone. Ryn watched and thought it would have been simpler to break Dylan’s limbs.
The One Who Eats Monsters (Wind and Shadow Book 1) Page 19