Panther in the Hive (The Tasha Trilogy Book 1)

by Cole, Olivia

  Tasha ran all the way home, tripping every few steps in her mandatory knee-high boots, the stupid white hat she wore to win Cara’s understanding flying off her head in the wind. She ran down Sheridan, past the 50-story sex shop, blowing past the Apple dealership—iScoot scooters were all the rage—all the way to her lobby door where she yanked open the entrance and ran straight into Brian, her doorman. He was humming.

  No, growling. What she thought was a hum was a low vibrating growl that entered Tasha’s eardrums and put in her mind’s eye the face of an eight-year-old boy with a hole in his head. She stumbled sideways into the lobby, staring goggle-eyed at Brian, who looked as if he was still trying to figure out what she was and how she got there. He looked dumbly at Tasha, then at the door. The humming sound could still be heard, but he didn’t seem to be interested in her, though his face held the same sort of placid, dense balefulness as the kid in the basement. Tasha took a step to her left, wondering if she could make it across the lobby to the elevator. She cursed the Apiary for making her wear these fucking ridiculous platform-heeled boots, cursed herself for leaving her apartment for such a stupid job. She’d trip for sure, or he’d catch her. She took another step. He looked.

  Her presence finally seemed to register, and his eyebrows knitted together a little more tightly, his expression one of dull annoyance. He grunted, the same half-bark that the boy had made, and started forward. His gait wasn’t overly slow or shambling or animal-like. He did sway a bit, but mostly he walked the way she always remembered him as walking. The slight limp wasn’t from some horrible evil mutation, she knew; it was from a baseball injury he’d sustained in college, sliding to home on a very close throw. He was three feet away now. He snapped his very human, very square, very white teeth. A red light in his neck flashed slowly. Tasha fumbled. She didn’t know what she was looking for, but her hand found the nail file in her pocket and she grasped it like it was the vine over the precipice. It ripped her pocket on the way out—a momentary flash of regret as the seams tore—and then she buried it in Brian’s neck.

  She brought her arm back and did it again, stopping Brian in his tracks. His eyebrows were almost touching between his eyes now and he turned his head at an uncomfortable angle trying to see what Tasha had done to him. Tasha stared at her hand. It held a file that, twenty minutes before, had been giving her a manicure. Now it was buried in her doorman’s flesh.

  The red light alongside the puncture wound pulsed madly now. The flesh began to creep around the file, trying to grow back together with the metal still embedded in the skin. Brian cocked his left arm back and punched Tasha in the face.

  The blow hit her like a subway, and she fell back against the wall behind her. A warm feeling spread across her face. She looked down at the bright red blood gushing onto her stupid blue uniform from her stupid nose.

  “Fuck,” she said weakly, for the sixth time that morning. She didn’t know how she was still clutching the file in her fist. She staggered to her feet, sliding sideways along the wall as she tried to get the platform boots to right themselves underneath her. Brian lunged clumsily at her: his teeth scraped her wrist but didn’t draw blood. Tasha swung her arm in a wide arc and the file entered his shoulder. He didn’t even flinch this time, just grabbed her powerfully by the arms and stretched his head nearer to her—mouth open, teeth snapping. His grunting was loud and labored. Tasha’s panic mounted and she attacked him with both hands, one with the file and the other clenched in a tight fist. The fist caught him in the throat, the file above the eye. Blood spouted from the wound, forming a rivulet that gushed down his face and into his vision. His teeth kept snapping.

  “Get the fuck off me!” she screeched, “Get the fuck off me! No!” She knew she sounded ridiculous but she couldn’t stop. The file entered his body at various points—his hands, his cheek, his chest—with no visible reaction: just a steady and unhurried groping for her throat as his square white teeth continued their monstrous snapping. And between all the frenzy, she could see every wound she inflicted on him closing up, the skin coming back together indifferently, the red light ever present.

  Tasha was getting weak. The adrenaline that had powered her initial defense was eroding under Brian’s steady onslaught. Her stabs were less ferocious. Blood remained on his flesh from the dozen wounds that had rapidly closed themselves, but her attacks were barely breaking the skin now. She felt weary, constantly parrying his seeking teeth. Meanwhile the red light in Brian’s neck flashed crazily with a rhythm so fast it matched Tasha’s heartbeat.

  “I said no!” she cried desperately as she stabbed Brian again in the cheek. To her own ears, she sounded like a person training a stubborn Pomeranian, or a distressed college girl fending off an entitled frat boy.

  Brian forced her to the floor. He sprawled on top of her, throwing his weight onto one of her thighs to pin it to the lobby tiles. Tasha writhed like a snake: the hand that wasn’t holding the file clutched his neck, squeezing hard enough to close his windpipe but making no difference in his persistence. Brian growled like a mongrel, his face inches from hers. She turned her head to the side, repulsed by his dull expression: she expected his breath to reek but it still smelled of Crest. It was only 9am.

  Brian was between her legs. Her wrists were clamped in his robotic grip as he attempted to force them over her head to allow him access to her throat. The red light flashed merrily. She wrenched the hand with the file from Brian’s clutches and plunged it into the place on his neck that was illuminated from within by the red light.

  There was a spark, and Brian jerked as if he’d been shocked. The steady growl that had filled Tasha’s ears since she entered the building faltered and turned into a cough. His grip grew weaker. Tasha let go of the nail file; it stood out from his neck like a maypole, ribbons of blood running freely from the wound and seeping down on to Tasha’s neck and cheek. Feeling him becoming heavier, she shoved with the last of her strength and sent the doorman toppling to his side.

  Brian died quickly. Tasha lay next to him on the floor panting and still bleeding from her nose, too weak to stand, and she watched his impassive eyes stare intently at a spot on the wall behind her, the eyelids unblinking. His eyebrows were still cinched together. He clutched at his throat as if asphyxiating, his legs spasming like those of a beetle as blood continued to gush from the wound in his neck. Tasha could still see the red light blinking behind the gore, but its rhythm was slowing. Eight seconds or so later the coughing and jerking ceased and Brian lay silent, his eyes still glaring over her shoulder.

  Tasha rolled on to her back in exhausted relief, but was forced to flip quickly back to her side as a surge of bile suddenly rushed to her mouth, and she retched on the lobby floor. The viscous fluid crept toward the doorman’s corpse. She stared at him. His nametag had been knocked sideways during the scuffle. Guest Services: Brian, it read.

  Tasha sat up and unzipped the white platform boots that almost cost her life. She kicked them off. Struggling to her feet, she stared down at Brian. Without really knowing why, Tasha went and grabbed him under the arms and dragged him toward the desk where he had spent most of his time. His body had become anvil-heavy and she had to take a few breaks while hauling him, gagging involuntarily once or twice as her grip was made slippery by his blood. When she made it to the desk with Brian in tow, she rested his body against the wall while she pulled out the chair for him. On the desk was a cup of coffee, still lukewarm, and a widescreen computer. Behind the computer was Brian’s Glass, a Playboy application still pulled up. On the screen a redhead sat with legs spread on the top of a piano, her fingers pulling back the lips of her hairless vulva.

  “Real nice, Brian,” Tasha said, smearing blood from her nose onto her cheek. “But can she play the piano?”

  She dumped Brian into his chair with less ceremony than she would have a moment before, roughly arranging him in an upright posture when he slumped to the side like a masterless marionette.

  She’d been halfway acros
s the lobby before she had a thought and turned back. She yanked the nail file from Brian’s neck, and the tiny, once-flashing mechanism came through the hole too, skewered on the end of the file like a kabob. A chip. The Chip. It was small and square—a little less than an inch in diameter—and a little bulb (a police siren in miniature) stood out from the center. So that’s what they looked like. The Chip was sticky with coagulated blood, and she dropped it into Brian’s lap. She took a last look at the doorman’s slumped figure and then headed back across the lobby. Stepping onto the elevator, she pressed twenty and it hummed upwards, making no stops.

  Chapter 7

  They’re learning to pass the time. Tasha can’t remember the last time she talked so much; her throat is actually sore. The last time she’d had a sore throat it was from a combination of yelling and whiskey while attending a rave in Wicker Park. This is what fun has become, she tells herself. No more shopping. No more trips to the spa. Over the last few days, she has looked in at her closet of brightly colored clothes more than once, checking on them. You okay in there, guys? She’d considered trying on every single outfit she owned, just because. But if Dinah were to ask what she was doing, Tasha doesn’t know if she could lie. If Dinah wasn’t confined to her apartment, she could come over and try on clothes too. The thought is absurd, and Tasha shakes her head at herself, but she still thinks it, clinging.

  “You know, Dale thought I had the Chip.”

  Tasha glances over at Dinah. They’ve pulled chairs up to their windows now and slouch onto the sills. Tasha would kill for a balcony.

  “Thought? How could he think you have the Chip?”

  Dinah smiles thinly and points to her neck. The three yards are just too far to see properly, but Tasha thinks she sees an outline she hadn’t noticed before, a faint black square.

  “What is that? Is that a tattoo?”

  Dinah laughs.

  “Yep. You know how people would get tattoos over their Chip to decorate it or highlight it or whatever? Status symbols and all that. Well, I got the tattoo…just not the Chip.”

  Tasha stares at her, Dinah’s smile growing wider and wider. Tasha thinks she might be blushing a little.

  “Are you serious? Did anyone know?”

  “How could they?” Dinah shrugs. “It looks like a black line around where the Chip would be. Fooled Dale and he saw me all the time.”

  “But—why’d you do it?”

  Dinah shrugs, her smile fading.

  “I mean, Dale was from a good family, you know? Rich boy. He was going to introduce me to his mom soon and I wanted them to think I was from a good family too. I mean, my family is great, but we’re not rich. I didn’t want his mom to get anything in her head about me marrying Dale for money. You know how some older white people are about girls that look like us. Especially when we’re dating their sons.”

  Tasha shrugs, blushing for reasons she’s not sure of.

  “Were both your parents black, or just one? Or…” Dinah falters. “Something else. Not to be rude.”

  “Not rude. My dad was mixed. Mom was black.”

  “Did they care who you dated?”

  “No. I mean she married a broke guy from Kentucky, right?” Tasha laughs a little, distracted. Their discussion of the Chip has reminded her of the day she was fired from the Apiary, just two days after Tasha had gone with Gina to Cybranu. Tasha had been behind the desk at Fetch Fetchers, her brain rotting into puppy chow, when the infamous Mrs. Kerry had entered the store like a Versace-clad Cruella de Vil, the usual pair of dark sunglasses covering her eyes.

  “Welcome to Fetch Fetchers,” Tasha had drawled, trying only a little not to sound robotic. She was tempted to ask Mrs. Kerry “How’s that lavender Lhasa Apso working out for you?” but it would probably result in her being fired. She had been warned about staying out of the clientele’s business; guilting them about their latest disposable companion wasn’t in the job description. So when Mrs. Kerry ignored Tasha’s greeting and glided around the store in a cool silence, Tasha went back to reading the Vogue app on Fetch Fetcher’s Glass.

  She only read Vogue for the ads; this one was for vodka. The models on the screen were posed like dolls, with X’s over their eyes. The one on the right wore a dress like a cake and was pale-skinned with bright lips, her hair teased into a tall pile like meringue. Her frosted mouth was open in an orgasmic expression. The arm of the model she shared the screen with was draped across her thigh, her black skin, nearly naked, a stripe of night across the first one’s stark pale flesh.

  “I wasn’t aware that Fetch Fetchers was in the practice of employing the deaf.”

  It was Mrs. Kerry, standing in front of Tasha and tapping her talons on the counter. If the woman had said something, Tasha hadn’t heard it.

  “I’m so sorry,” Tasha said, quelling her belligerence. “What can I help you with?” She shoved the Glass under the counter and clasped her hands in front of her, widening her eyes for an appearance of profound interest.

  Mrs. Kerry squinted an eye at the polished brown girl in front of her, gave Tasha a quick up-and-down to ascertain whether she was being made fun of or not. She decided that she wasn’t—she was wrong—and lifted her hair behind her shoulder with the back of a limp, laser-tanned hand.

  “I want an animal. Something elegant.”

  Mrs. Kerry turned to survey the store with a disparaging look, a look that implied she was sure that there was nothing of any elegance to be found there. Tasha took that moment as an opportunity to roll her eyes before launching into the speech about pink Pomeranians and such, but Mrs. Kerry halted her with a raised red claw.

  “No, no…I said elegant.”

  Tasha wondered what an elegant animal would look like to someone like Mrs. Kerry. Something resembling the way she thought of herself as looking, no doubt. Armadillo, Tasha thought to herself. Out loud, she offered blandly,

  “Maybe a micro lynx?”

  Mrs. Kerry’s first reaction had been disdain—as it was for everything—but after seeming to go through a mental Rolodex of her personal zoological history, she came to the conclusion that perhaps a lynx might be just the thing.

  Tasha led her down a brightly lit aisle marked Fetch Felines. Various cats stared balefully out at the two women from the cages that lined the row, their diamond eyes flat with what Tasha always imagined to be malice. It had disturbed her that they never meowed: their starey silence gave Tasha the feeling that she was walking the Green Mile, the long ceramic stroll to Old Sparky. The cats’ role in this illusion varied: sometimes they were fellow inmates, regarding her as one would regard one’s own reflection in water—a vague recognition with an impression of strangeness. Other times the cats were her keepers, condemning witnesses urging her toward her doom.

  Tasha neared the end of the aisle and gestured grandly (as she’d been trained) at the few cages of micro lynxes and the single mini cougar that napped behind the bars. When they first arrived at Fetch Fetchers they would pace the way Tasha had seen big cats do in zoos as a child. But after awhile the pacing stopped and they lay on their beds dully, their mouths partly open like the girls in Vogue, gaping.

  “What a pretty thing,” said Mrs. Kerry, leaning slightly toward the cage, bending at the waist.

  “Yes,” Tasha replied, laying her hand on the bars. “The micro lynx is a beauty. They are designed not to shed, so their beautiful coats will stay on them, and not on your upholstery.” The speech felt like saltine crackers in her mouth, as it always did.

  “Oh yes, I can’t have the little dear shedding all over my mink furs, can I? Fur and fur must be kept separate if I…”

  Mrs. Kerry had trailed off. Tasha waited for her to continue, and when she did not, she turned to look for the cause of her distraction. Mrs. Kerry’s eyes were fixed on Tasha’s hand, which still rested on the cage. The woman’s customary sharp look had given way to a dull stare. A wrinkle crinkled between her eyes: she would doubtlessly attack it with Botox if she could see it. She
stared dumbly at Tasha’s hand, as if angered by the sight of it.

  “Mrs. Kerry…?” Tasha didn’t know what to make of it and considered shaking the woman. Was she drunk? One too many Xanax? Maybe she just needed to sit down. Tasha reached out to touch her shoulder.

  Tasha gasped as Mrs. Kerry grabbed her hand. She brought it very close to her face and eyed the ring on Tasha’s finger, her mother’s ring, an onyx stone set in simple silver.

  “Where did you get this ring?”

  Mrs. Kerry’s voice was slow, thick, like words spoken through a curtain. Tasha had a fleeting impression of a drunken priest, slurring through the confessional screen. She stared at Mrs. Kerry, whose eyes were hooded, the crease between them deepening, giving her a look of idiotic annoyance.

  When Tasha didn’t answer, the words came again, slower this time.

  “Where did you get…this ring?”

  There was a lilt to the words—beneath the sleepy drawl, Tasha could still hear the country club emphasis, the “Oh, Victoria, those shoes are simply darling! Where did you get those shoes?” Mrs. Kerry seemed to be sleepwalking on a plane that hovered somewhere between inebriation and snobbery.

  “It was my mother’s.”

  Mrs. Kerry went on staring, her head swaying a little from side to side, a dizzy duck. She rubbed the ring with her thumb, and Tasha couldn’t help but imagine her as Bilbo Baggins, a harmless enough creature turned odd by accessories.

  Mrs. Kerry raised her head slowly, taking in Tasha inch by inch. Her eyes traveled up Tasha’s slender arm, then wandered up her throat as if memorizing it. Her cloudy blue eyes met Tasha’s squinting brown ones, and the voice came again, harsher this time.

  “Your mother’s dead.”

  The head had snapped down again, its mouth open.

  Tasha had worked with dogs long enough to develop hot reflexes for these situations and she snatched her hand back before the teeth made contact, the ring catching on and chipping Mrs. Kerry’s incisor. The older woman went for Tasha’s throat with outstretched hands, her face unchanged. Tasha’s back slammed against the cage holding a micro lynx, causing the animal to screech in surprise. Or maybe the screech was Tasha’s. It was impossible to know which came first, but the air was soon full of screeching: Tasha screaming as she tried to pry the fake-tanned hands from her throat; Mrs. Kerry making a sound halfway between shriek and bark as she scrabbled to get a better hold; the Fetch Felines all raising a racket Tasha had never heard before. In her peripheral vision, their mouths were wide and their teeth were bright.