"I could be standing right next to my photo and they'd never know," she said and sauntered down two more steps only to halt at the sound of his voice.
"Afraid not, Minou."
She turned, taking in his full height warily. "What do you mean?"
"I mean they would have somehow gotten their hands on a recent photo."
Comprehension dawned. "Somehow; meaning you took a picture of me."
"Took it, delivered it. Identified you by your Mark." He jammed his hands into his jeans pockets. "They know who you are and what you look like. They even know the street you trick out on."
Theda studied the back of her hand where her identification had been dyed into the skin. A means, so the Establishment said, to cut down on identity theft. "So I'm screwed."
"You were screwed. But now I've got you." He seemed pleased with himself.
"Doubly screwed, then." She looked down at the gorgeous woman at the bottom of the stairs, up at the man who had abducted her and then saved her life. Had his hands in Bridget's drawers plenty of times, this lover of his. His hands, so often rough with Theda in these last two days, had been gentle in the tub, caring. She imagined those hands roaming Bridget's body, gentle, loving, but urgent.
"I don't think I'm hungry anymore," she said and did her best to hold his gaze until he gave in and nodded.
"Suit yourself," he said. "But she makes a hell of a brunch. You might want to rethink it."
"What I think is that I'll lie down." She put her fingers to her temple for just the right effect. He seemed to buy it. They both did.
He galloped down the steps toward the aromas of bacon and cinnamon and she watched him go. They could have a good breakfast together, those two, smiling across the table at each other. They could even hold hands across the gingham tablecloth for all she cared.
She had much better things in mind to ward off the hunger.
Dragon: Act 2
Ezekiel had caught her with her hands in his jacket pocket earlier, trying to steal the cache of godspit that he'd stolen from Ami, but she hadn't spent the last year on the streets without learning a thing or two. Big bad bounty hunter really needed to be more observant if he wanted to stay a step ahead of his prey. One thing she'd learned during her time on the streets was that people saw what they wanted to see. Ezekiel wanted to see her put the smears back into his pocket and so she obliged him quite willingly, offering up the expected guilty look, even. She'd made a big show of putting them back from where she'd extracted them, but she'd flipped one of the smears between her fingers as she showed him her palm, proving that she was a good girl, after all, properly reverent and obedient.
She couldn't imagine a better time to bliss out than when she was safely ensconced in an upscale west end apartment with the bounty hunter charged with hunting her down protecting her. It was a gift if she'd ever seen one. She should feel guilty, like being given a Christmas present when you haven't bought something in return, but the notion of Christmas was long gone with the notion of guilt. And damned if she didn't feel almost as though she was expecting an entire Christmas tree of unexpected gifts beneath the boughs. She couldn't remember a time when she felt as excited about doing a smear. Usually there was the tiniest bit of worry that while she was incapacitated and in the throes, she could be leaving herself vulnerable to just about any danger possible in the supercity. Ezekiel had even found her that way the night he first tried to abduct her: being assaulted by two disgusting derelicts, unable to fully resist.
But she wouldn't think about Ezekiel. She wouldn't think about the way he'd pulled those two rapists off her when she couldn't prevent them from taking advantage of her ecstasy, and she wouldn't think about the way his eyes peered at her in the street light, making her feel grateful for the first time in months. Making her feel something she didn't think she ever remembered feeling.
Enough about Ezekiel and enough about all of this zealot business, about the sense that she had lived a lifetime with him long before, one filled with torturous agony and passionate trysts. She had a full smear waiting for her. She had a real bed waiting for her. She had any number of hours stretching out ahead of her and if she didn't do it right now, it would be all she would think about until she finally succumbed anyway. Best get on with it.
She hooked off the sneakers, pressing each toe into each heel and kicking them next to the bed. Now that she'd decided to go through with it, she couldn't get her clothes off fast enough. Her mouth kept flooding with water and her tongue felt about twice its size. She shook her hands out, drew in several deep breaths, then lay backwards on the bed. She was closing her eyes even as the smear touched her tongue and in seconds the hot oil feeling had seeped into each pore.
She thought she sank beneath the oil at first and she could swear that the bliss smile had pulled at the corners of her mouth, except something wasn't quite right. There was an army of tiny ants crawling over her skin, biting her in unison here and there like hot pokers pressing into her flesh. First her bicep, then her ribs. Once she thought they'd even found a way to make her cheek feel as though it had been slapped.
She tried to open her eyes; there was too much oil lubricating them shut. All she could manage was a greased smile that somehow got pinched together so hard her jaw gaped open and her cheeks ached.
She started to float then and she thought, finally. The godspit had taken over, driving the ants back to their nest. It would be okay now. She'd float and watch the lights and lose everything except the pure euphoria filling her to the roots of her hair.
She woke shivering. At first, she wasn't sure she had opened her eyes at all; the darkness was so complete. Before she could orient herself she realized the bed was no longer soft and warm; it didn't yield beneath her shoulder like it should and it smelled of cement and wet leaves. Even so, there was no need for panic; all she had to do was take a breath, force it down to her toes, swallow. Her hands groped into the darkness anyway, searching for information that she could feed to her still-fuzzy brain. She expected to reach out into a good deal of space, but her fingers tangled into something scratchy and holey, like an old-fashioned Afghan.
"Finally awake?"
Ezekiel's voice had come from somewhere up around her head. She tried to crane her neck to see him, but even as she tilted her head, she began to realize he was hovering over her, probably mere inches above. She wished she could see him. She wished she could see anything.
She wanted to ask where they were, but all that came out was a groan. She didn't need him to speak again to know he was furious with her. The tension was enough to light the dark. Better to try to figure out her location. A cursory search with palms over her body told her she was still undressed, but that she did indeed have some sort of homemade crocheted blanket wrapped around her. Her nose told her she was lying very close to some sort of cement wall, that the wall was curved and that it was damp. A drain. That's where they were. And it was obviously nighttime.
"Why?" she managed to croak out.
He snorted. "Why? I could ask you the same thing."
She wouldn't defend herself for using the smear. She didn't regret it. "It was mine. I had a right to use it."
"There's an addict for you, thinking of yourself first."
It occurred to her that he could have just dumped her in the storm drain and left her.
"Thank you," she said.
"For what?"
"For making sure I have a safe place to stay."
She tried to squirm out of the blanket or at least get her arms free so she could find some sort of sitting position, hunkered inside. Her night vision began to adjust and she could make out the way he was curled into the drainage pipe, his arms crossed over his knees. Some of the light from the street leaked in enough that she could see the outline of his face. She imagined how he'd look in the full light, ridiculously overlarge like Clifford the Big Red Dog. She thought she might smile at the image, but then remembered he'd dumped her in a drain pipe.
S
he moaned herself upright, wrapping the blanket behind her shoulders and stretching it to her toes. Through the opening, she could see street lamps and beyond those a few squares of dim light that would undoubtedly be apartment windows in the west end. She could do worse, she supposed. She wouldn't be able to set up shop for a while, all things considered, but she might be able to find her way back to the survivor station, get a sandwich from Ami if he was still alive, maybe enough smears to last a week if he took pity on her, make her way back here and lay low until this all blew over.
"Did you at least bring my clothes?" she asked him. She could make the trek in her underwear, shoeless, but it would look strange enough that it might draw attention.
"You really are piece of work," he said.
"I don't think it's too much to ask; you cut my clothes up after all. Granted, you did wrap me in a blanket so I wouldn't freeze when you kicked me out, but that's no reason I shouldn't expect the decency of clothing."
"Do you have any idea what we went through?"
A chill swept down her spine and she had to wrap the blanket tighter. "I imagine one of you--probably Bridget--saw me lying there." She said the name with a touch of spite in her tone because thinking of Bridget and her perfect face made her want to hit something. "Then I suppose after she'd taken time to make the bacon and eggs and pancakes and all those nice little things that make a person expect a thank you, she felt as though I was taking advantage." She chewed the inside of her cheek in silence for a moment. "So yeah," she said. "I'm pretty sure I have a good idea."
She expected him to protest, not touch her gently beneath the chin with his fingers, tilting her face toward his. His mouth was so close to hers his words could have come from her lungs. "You infuriate me," he said. "You're so damaged you can't even see what's in front of you."
"I see plenty," she argued.
His fingers swept behind her ear, cupping the back of her neck and massaging just beneath the bone at the base of her skull. She thought for a second that he might kiss her; he was already pulling her close, snaking his other arm behind her back. In that moment, her stomach churned with the possibility of it. She went as limp as she could, yielding to him, letting her torso arch into his.
She wasn't sure how he managed it, but he yanked her backwards from the storm drain, blanket and all, out into the air currents of the supercity. The blanket was stuck between them, her back vulnerable and cold as the breeze hit it. Her bare feet told her exactly how late the night was; the frigid pavement sent shocks straight to her knees.
"You want to get high," he said, his mouth sounded like it was clenched into a line of tightly controlled anger. "I'll get you high. I'll get you good and high, high enough that you'll wish I'd never found you."
She was still trying to process everything, grasping at the blanket, trying to wrap it around herself to find some warmth, when he picked her up and flung her over his shoulder.
"It was my own smear," she argued against his back, acutely aware of his stubbled chin and jaw against her bare ass cheek. "It was mine to take as I wanted. You stole it from me."
"You could have waited," he said.
She felt him striding off, had to grip his waist to keep herself from bouncing against him.
"Where are you taking me?"
"Where you belong, obviously. You don't seem to care what kind of danger you're in."
His idea of where she belonged became clear a few blocks later where she found herself plopped down unceremoniously onto her feet in front of a below street-level door. He pulled the blanket from her shoulders and flung it into the corner of the gutter, leaving her bare of everything but her borrowed bra and thong. She stood gaping at him, pulling her arms up around her chest because she was both cold and afraid. She wasn't sure what she was going to do with her bottom half.
"This is surreal; you have no right," she started to say, but he placed his palm over her mouth ever so gently.
"There's no such thing as rights anymore, remember?" His face was close to hers in the dark and she could smell the soap on him from his shower the night before. "You almost died today, do you know that?" The throatiness of his voice unnerved her.
"That was yesterday," she said into his hand, working hard to remember. Time really was slipping through her fingers.
Without a word, he took his hand off her mouth and rapped the door smartly. It yawned open, held ajar by a petite and effeminate young man wearing leather from head to toe. "Are you returning, renting, or buying?"
Ezekiel pushed past him, pulling Theda stumbling along in her bare feet. "None of the above, Sasha," he said. "I brought my own."
The use of his name made Sasha take a longer look at Ezekiel. "Ah, it's you, Eazy. It's been a while." He sounded displeased but Ezekiel made no apology.
Theda peered into the smoky gloom. She could make out sofas against the wall, a few broad well-cushioned recliners. There were shelves along the walls that might at one time have been made to contain books, but instead were now filled with hookahs and liquor bottles. A few well-dressed businessmen lounged about, smoking and drinking. A handful of chicly dressed women sipped cocktails. So this was where the esteemed of the west end spent their free time.
"This way," Ezekiel jerked on her wrist, urging her to follow him behind the effeminate doorman, who looked back over his shoulder briefly.
"I take it you're looking for the den," Sasha said.
"Yes," Ezekiel responded.
Sasha halted midway down a long hallway in front of double French doors. There was a podium much like one would see at a high-end restaurant with a leather bound appointment book and feathered pen atop.
"Neck, wrist, or waist?" he asked and gave Theda an assessing look that sent her hands to her chest and hips at the same time, trying feebly to cover herself. "Neck, I'd say."
Ezekiel turned his green eyed stare on her and for a moment she felt even more naked. "Waist," he said, correcting the young man.
Sasha took a few steps to the left, just beyond the podium and pulled open an ornate chest.
"What is this?" she asked Ezekiel. "What did you mean by waist?"
Ezekiel's charcoal brow lifted matter-of-factly. "He wants to know what kind of leash you'll be wearing."
Dragon: Act 3
Her mouth went dry, and she could feel the last of her buzz leaking out her ears. She could swear she shouted obscenities at him, but Ezekiel merely shrugged in that offhand way he had that made everything seem as though he'd just been offered tea.
The effeminate rattled around inside the chest for a few moments then held up a length of chain ending in a wide belt that came together into locking ends.
Theda flew at Ezekiel, fists landing wherever she could score. He gripped her wrist on her last punch and twisted just enough that she found herself pulled backward against him, chest heaving. His heart thudded against her back; his muscled thighs pinioned hers.
She felt his mouth caress her ear. "It's not what you think, Minou. Trust me." His tone turned apologetic, but she realized as he spoke that the tone wasn't for her benefit; it was for Sasha's. "They say they'll do anything, until they actually get here," he told Sasha in a pained voice.
"I understand; it happens more than you know," the man said, eying her toe to head. "Pity you aren't selling her; she'd bring a tidy profit with that honeyed hair, ratty though it is." He combed through his own fastidiously as though to instruct her to do the same.
Theda twisted, trying to aim a kick at him. Sasha grinned. "I'll give you ten thousand for her. That sultry, haunted look, and that kind of spit doesn't show itself in her kind very often, if you catch the pun."
Several things ran through her mind, not the least of which the concern that she was actually being sold. Human trafficking stories rose after the god came and left, but she'd never known anyone who went missing, had just assumed it happened somewhere, just out of her sphere. She could imagine it on the eastern part of the city, but the west?
"I'm in a
spitters' den, aren't I," she hissed. "You brought me to a spitters' den."
She felt Ezekiel nod. "Now put your leash on like a good slave and I'll take you through. Show you what you're missing."
"Fifteen thousand," Sasha--the owner, Theda now realized, said.
"I'll cut your throat in your sleep," she growled at him, but it only resulted in him upping his price.
"I'd better get you out of here before I have a chance to make my year's wage," Ezekiel drawled. He took the leash from Sasha and was wrapping it around Theda's waist when Sasha stepped close enough to hold out a jangling set of cuffs.
"You might want these too," he said.
"I have my own," Ezekiel told him and then reached down into his boot. He extracted the Taser. "And I have this."
She'd forgotten about that. Time really had slipped by if she could forget his early threat of using it on her. By now she didn't doubt at all that he would use it.
"Aren't you afraid we'll be recognized?" she whispered, close to his ear, keeping her eye on Sasha, trying to assess whether or not he thought they looked familiar. "I mean you're in just as much of a mess as I am."
Ezekiel peered up at her as he clicked the lock closed. "Safest place for us, Minou," he told her. "Folks will be too busy with their own activities to care about us."
"You don't have to do this," she said.
"I think I do. I think you need to see where you could end up even if you do manage to escape the beast's henchmen."
"Henchmen like you," she goaded.
He said nothing to that, merely pushed open the right door and pulled on her leash just hard enough to let her know he was in command. She resisted for half a moment until the belt cut into the skin of her torso.
Wicked Legends: A Dystopian Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy Collection Page 84