Ferocious

by Paula Stokes

  Snake Tattoo bends down to look me in the eye. Blood drips from his nose. “You’re going to pay for that, you little bitch.” He brings the butt of his gun down on the back of my head.

  Pain rockets through me. I struggle to scan the floor for anything that might make a good weapon. From this vantage point, I can see beneath the bed, but there’s nothing there except a couple of dust balls and a pair of shoes. One of my throwing knives is still on the nightstand, but that’s on the other side of the bed and might as well be in a different county.

  Snake Tattoo strides across the room and peeks out the window. “There’s a couple people heading this way,” he says. “We’d better wait a few minutes until the street clears.”

  Blondie has a knee jammed into the center of my back, his gun pressed against the outside of my leg. “I can think of a good way to kill a few minutes,” he says suggestively, his free hand stroking the back of my neck.

  Immediately my whole body goes tense. “I’d rather kill you.” The words surprise me, not because they aren’t true, but because I meant to say, “I’d rather die.”

  Snake Tattoo chuckles lightly. “Sounds like she’s not that into you.”

  “Yeah well, she might feel differently once I’m into her.”

  He rolls me over and once again pins me to the floor with his knee. His eyes rake down the front of my body like claws.

  Kill them, a voice whispers. Kill them both.

  Rage stirs in my chest. Quiet first, then louder. It spreads to my extremities as Blondie runs his knuckles down the bruise on my face. “You’re pretty when you’re scared,” he says.

  “They’re all pretty when they’re scared,” Snake Tattoo says. He affixes a new piece of duct tape over my mouth.

  I squeeze my eyes shut, searching for a safe place in the dark. But it’s like I can hear colors, and my brain is shrieking RED! RED! RED! Suddenly I am lashing out all over. The laughter and jeering of the men turn to swearing.

  And then shouting.

  And then silence.

  CHAPTER 9

  LILY

  I am going to kill them both.

  Repulsive.

  Disgusting.

  Winter thinks she’s lost her humanity. She cries into her pillow. She calls herself a monster. These two are the monsters, not her.

  My first punch breaks a nose. I hear the crunch as cartilage gives way beneath my knuckles. Blood coats my fingers. The yellow-haired man windmills backward. He points his gun at my legs and pulls the trigger, but his aim is off and his bullet ends up in the floor.

  “You’re dead, you little bitch,” one of them says.

  I can’t tell who the voice comes from. I don’t even care. I like the idea of being dead. That means I can do anything I want.

  I want to kill these men.

  I want to kill every man who has ever hurt us.

  Yellow Hair aims his gun again but all it does is click when he tries to pull the trigger. The bullet must be jammed. Lucky me.

  I lunge for him. He kicks me hard in the gut and I end up on my back on the bed. The other man slams the butt of his gun into the side of my head. Their blows should hurt, but they don’t.

  I am the one who doesn’t feel the pain.

  I reach for Winter’s throwing knife. So black. So sleek.

  Rearing back, I throw. The blade twists end over end through the air and then buries itself in the center of the yellow-haired man’s chest with a slippery thunk.

  His mouth gapes in surprise. Like a fish, I think. Only I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen a fish, for real. Winter has seen fish. Winter swims with sharks.

  “Now look who’s dead,” I say.

  Blood rises up and spills from his lips as he reaches down and grips the end of the knife. He’s going to pull it out. I’m only thirteen and even I know better than that.

  The man crumples to the ground, the handle of Winter’s knife still protruding from his body. I look around for the other knife.

  The man with the tattoo backs away from me like he thinks I might be rabid.

  He might be right.

  Are monsters afraid of other monsters?

  Winter doesn’t usually give herself to me like she does Rose. Only once, when she was dying. I stabbed a man for her. I would have killed him if he hadn’t run away.

  I might be younger, but I’m getting stronger. Winter should trust me. She needs me.

  She needs me to do the monster things.

  The man with the tattoo points the gun at my legs and squeezes off a shot. It grazes my shin, leaves a trail of wet heat.

  But still no pain.

  I reach for the nearest thing, which just happens to be a cheap painted vase, and throw it at him. As he bats it down with his free hand, I kick hard at the hand with the gun. It flies through the air and ends up somewhere on the other side of the bed.

  I dive for it. My fingers close around the grip. I spin around, just as the man grabs something from the desk. He goes for the window, launching himself through it like he can fly.

  I wish I could fly.

  I lower the gun as his feet disappear from view.

  I don’t know what he took from Winter, but whatever it is, at least that’s all she lost tonight. I look down at the man with the knife sticking out of his chest. He looks dead, but I don’t know how to tell these things for sure. I should probably stab him a few more times, just to be safe. I don’t want him or his friend to come after us. This is a thing I’ve learned about men. If you give them a chance to hurt you more than once, they will.

  Setting the gun on the bed, I wrap my fingers around the hilt of the knife and pull it loose from his chest. The blade is wet with bright-red blood. The fabric of the man’s shirt grows darker around the wound. I bury the knife into the flesh of his stomach, the soft tissues swallowing up the blade. I pull it out again. More blood. My eyes skim the muscle and tendons along the side of his throat.

  Stop, a soft voice says. Let me fix things.

  Rose. Big sister. It’s good there is at least one of us who fixes things.

  I am the one who destroys them.

  CHAPTER 10

  ROSE

  “You shouldn’t have, Lily,” I chide. “Winter doesn’t need more blood on her hands.”

  The younger girl thrashes around inside of me, trying to regain control, but I’m stronger than she is. I’m stronger than all of them. There are five of us, counting Winter, but she doesn’t know that. She thinks it’s just her and me, which means I’m going to get blamed for this.

  Let me finish him, Lily hisses in my brain. He deserves to die.

  I wonder if Winter hears Lily sometimes the way that I do. “You already finished him,” I say. “And then some. You need to learn how to control it. One day you’re going to get us all in trouble.”

  I pace back and forth across the floor. Winter is my responsibility. I feel her beneath our skin, reaching for the surface, emerging from some murky pool. I push her down, focus on me, Rose. The helper. The protector. I am going to take care of this. It’s my fault, in a way. I’m the one who watches Lily. I work hard to control her—she can be so rash.

  It’s my turn to be rash.

  CHAPTER 11

  I open my eyes, disoriented by the harsh fluorescent lighting. Something cold and wet pings off my body. Damn it. I’m in the shower again. I’m curled in the fetal position, my back and neck pressed awkwardly against the glass door. Glancing around, I realize with a sickening dread that some of the tiles are pink.

  “What did you do, Rose?” I lift a hand to my head and then glance around the tiny bathroom. There’s no note this time, and there’s also no headset on the sink. As I turn toward the doorway, the attack rushes back to me. The blond man and the man with the snake tattoo, sent by Kyung to steal the technology. I remember them holstering their guns when they tried to take me out the window. I kicked at one of them, fought back, but didn’t manage to escape. Then what? I think one of them made some sort of comment ab
out touching me and it made me feel sick inside. That’s all I remember.

  I shut off the water and struggle to my feet, wincing in pain. I look down at my legs. There’s a line of missing flesh on my right calf where my skin looks like it got seared off, like maybe a bullet grazed me. The tissue is red and meaty like raw hamburger. My stomach lurches and I look away. There are bruises forming on my torso and ribs from a fight I don’t remember having. I dry my body on a threadbare bath towel.

  As I step out of the enclosure, I notice my bloodstained clothes on the bathroom floor. Shit. All of that did not come from my leg.

  “What did you do?” I repeat.

  No response. I tie a hand towel around my calf to keep the wound clean, even though it’s mostly stopped bleeding.

  Tucking the bath towel around my body as best I can, I open the bathroom door a crack and look out. Light filters through the open window, but there’s no movement. I press my ear to the crack. No sounds. I open the door a little wider. That’s when I see the feet.

  They’re connected to a body. Shit, shit, shit. A man with bright-blond hair.

  I bend down and test for a pulse, even though I can tell right away that he’s dead. One of my throwing knives lies next to his stomach, the blade crusted over with dried blood. Stepping past the body, I check the dead bolt and the chain on the door—both secure. At least there’s no danger of a maid stumbling in here before I can figure out what to do. But then, how did the men get in? I glance around the room and find the open window, one pane broken in order to undo the lock. Balmy air wraps around me as I pull the window shut. If anyone had heard the commotion, they would have been banging on the door by now. Still, there’s no way to fix it. I can’t stay here. I’m not safe.

  My suitcase is empty, the contents strewn across the floor. I grab a clean set of clothes and get dressed, noticing that it’s after eight in the morning. I have no idea what happened since the men broke in, probably around one or two a.m.

  I sit on the edge of the bed and try to calm myself. But it’s hard to be calm when a dead body lurks in your peripheral vision. I decide to drag him into the bathroom where I won’t have to look at him.

  I bend down and grab the collar of his shirt and give him a tug. The fabric rips. Swearing, I try again, this time grabbing onto the meaty parts of his upper arms. I manage to move him a few inches. He must weigh two hundred pounds or more.

  I quickly abandon that plan and instead sit cross-legged on the floor, the bed serving as a barrier between me and the blond man. How did they say they had found me? Mr. Cho knows where to find everyone. Could they have followed me from Jun’s? Maybe Kyung suspected I might try to trick him. Maybe someone was watching Jun’s apartment.

  I grab my phone and call him, but then I remember he should be on a flight to St. Louis right now. All I can do is pray that he made it to the airport.

  I need to get moving. I start wiping down the room. I’m not exactly sure what to do about the body. I’m fairly certain I killed him and that it was self-defense. Still, I have no desire to get police involved. There are no cameras in the guesthouse lobby. The ajumma didn’t make me give her any identification. Therefore, there isn’t much evidence here that the police could use to track me down.

  I need to deal with the body and find a new place to hide until I can figure out my next move. I grab my suitcase from the floor and start stuffing my clothes and wigs back into it. That’s when I hear a knock at the door.

  CHAPTER 12

  Swearing under my breath, I peer out the peephole, expecting the owner of the guesthouse or perhaps the police. What I’m not expecting is Jesse. He’s wearing track pants and an oversized hoodie. His brown hair is sticking up in places and flat in others. He’s got a couple days’ worth of dark beard stubble—more than I’ve ever seen him with before.

  I open the door a crack. “What are you doing here?” I ask incredulously. “How did you find me?”

  “It’s a long story. Let me in so I can help you.”

  “I don’t need your help,” I hiss. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  “You need someone’s help.” He glances from left to right. “And I’m the only one I see.”

  “Fine.” I open the door just wide enough to admit Jesse and then close it again, putting on the chain and dead bolt.

  Jesse whistles long and low as his eyes take in the scene. He pulls out a hat and a pair of gloves and slides them on. He goes to the body and does a perfunctory pulse check. He looks up at me. “Do you remember calling me?”

  I furrow my brow. “You mean Saturday?”

  “I mean last night, or I guess this morning for you.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “Check your phone.”

  I grab the burner phone from the dresser and check the call record. Sure enough, I talked to Jesse from 1:31 to 1:37 this morning.

  “You called yourself Rose,” he says.

  I sink to the mattress. I cradle my head in my hands as reality dawns on me. “So my alter did this, to protect me. And then called you for help.”

  “Maybe,” Jesse says. “You said something about Lily.”

  “Lily is the name my alter used as an alias when she was recording.”

  Jesse kneels down so we’re eye to eye. “I know. But you talked about Lily like she was a separate person. You told me not to be mad at her, that she was just a thirteen-year-old kid, that she didn’t know any better.”

  I have no memory of any of this. “Did you come here just to remind me that I’m crazy?”

  “I came because you asked for my help,” Jesse says. “At least some part of you still trusts me. I started reading up on dissociative identity disorder on the plane. You know, it’s common to have alters that are different ages.”

  Alters. As in more than one. My leg is pulsing with pain and now my head is throbbing too. “I can’t think about any of that right now.” I lift one hand, gesture around the room. “I don’t suppose you know how to make all of this go away?”

  “What name did you use to check in?” Jesse asks.

  “A fake name.”

  “Different from the one you used to fly with?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I think we should just leave it,” he says. “Leave the body. Leave his gun. Leave the room as is.”

  “But my fingerprints are everywhere.”

  “But they’re not on file, are they? Were you ever arrested for…”

  “Prostitution?” I finish, my voice sharpening into a hard edge. “No. Kyung’s men were very careful about that sort of thing.”

  “So then it doesn’t matter if they have your fingerprints. This guy is probably a known thug with an illegal weapon. From the state of the room, it’s obvious there was a struggle here. I say we just make it look like you were attacked and you managed to get into the bathroom and lock the door and then you escaped.”

  I rub my temples with my fingertips. “But I’ve wiped away some of the evidence and…”

  “It doesn’t matter. Like I said, this guy was probably a loser. Was he alone?”

  I shake my head. “There was one other man. He stole my headset and the neural editor.”

  “Well, that sucks, but he’s not going to go to the cops and say you stabbed his friend while they were robbing you. If we set up a somewhat decent self-defense scenario, the cops will run with it.”

  I nod. It makes sense. “So what do I do?”

  Jesse has me walk him through what I remember. He takes some coagulated blood from the dead guy and smears it on the furniture in a couple of places that I had started to clean.

  “You should leave your suitcase and some of your stuff,” he says, “so it looks like you really ran off in the middle of the night.”

  I pull my other knife, a wad of cash, and the envelope of items from Gideon out from beneath the mattress. I tuck the knives into my boots and the cash and envelope into my backpack. Then I also pull the wigs out of the suitcase.

  Jesse arche
s an eyebrow.

  “They’re expensive,” I say. “Plus, it might seem weird, a girl traveling with multiple wigs.”

  “Good point,” he says.

  I peel a few hundreds off the wad of cash and slide them back under the mattress. “That will at least pay for the damage to the room.”

  “Only you would worry about something like that right now.” Jesse coughs sharply. He winces as he presses one gloved palm against his chest.

  “Are you all right?” Up until this moment he’s been moving and acting like the Jesse I remember. I almost forgot he was bedridden and wearing an oxygen mask only a few days ago.

  “Yeah. I’m just a little weak. I’m going to go outside and make sure there aren’t any cameras pointed at your bathroom window. I’m also going to make sure no one else is around. Go into the bathroom, lock the bathroom door, and then sneak out the window once I give you the signal.”

  “Wait,” I say. “How did you even get out of the hospital? Are you going to be all right?”

  “I pulled out my IV and left,” Jesse admits. “They can’t keep me there if I don’t want to be there.”

  “But you were taking antibiotics, right? What if one of your wounds gets infected?”

  “Then I guess I’ll have to go back to the hospital,” he says. “I don’t really deal in what-ifs anymore. I deal in whatever needs to be done now.”

  * * *

  In the bathroom, Jesse has dried the tiles of the shower enclosure and smeared a bit of blood on the glass and the sink to make it look like I didn’t stop to clean myself. My clothes and the towel I used are nowhere to be found. He’s good at this, I admit grudgingly. I’m glad Rose called him.

  His face appears outside the window. Through the smudged glass, his hazel eyes look monochromatic, but it’s only been a few days since I stared into them affectionately, allowing myself to get drawn into an undertow of browns and golds and greens. That feels like another lifetime ago.