“I’m sorry,” I gasped as I used the woman as a human step stool to pull myself up and over the fence. “I’m so sorry.”
It was dark on the other side. I wanted to run, but I made myself take a few precious seconds and get a feel for my surroundings. After being delayed by Angelique (a good a word to use as any, I supposed) my sense of direction was off. I felt dizzy and disoriented, as though I’d taken one turn too many on the Ferris wheel.
A sense of unease prickled at the back of my neck, lifting the tiny hairs as I looked around the new yard I’d climbed down into. Something was different from before. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. It wasn’t until I shuffled a few steps forward, ducking low to get under a clothesline, that I realized what it was.
The screams.
They’d stopped.
I wasn’t naive enough to think everyone had gotten away from their vicious captors. There was a reason for the sudden silence. A reason I didn’t want to think about. A reason I couldn’t think about. At least not if I wanted to keep some semblance of sanity.
My mind was own the brink of breaking. I could feel fissures forming as it struggled to explain the unexplainable. To reason out the unreasonable.
Giant Man.
Silver fangs.
Angelique.
Instant healing.
What did it mean? What was happening? I didn’t know and part of me - the part that was struggling to remain sane - didn’t want to know.
So I started running. Not flat out, like I’d been doing before, but a steady jog that carried me swiftly towards the apartment complex. I had my bearings now. I knew where I was going. I could see Green Lane looming in the distance; an ugly building that stuck out from the rest of the town like a sore thumb. Only a handful of yards, the train tracks, and the old abandoned baseball field stood in my way.
My tempo increased, my legs pumping faster, my breaths coming harder. I had my rhythm back, and my one goal along with it. Get home, get Dad, get Travis. Get home, get Dad, get Travis. Get home, get Dad, get Travis.
I didn’t allow myself to think about what it would mean if I got home and my dad wasn’t there. What it would mean if no one were there.
My foot hooked on something. A hose, left out to water the lawn. I went flying through the air, arms outstretched, hair lifted away from my face, completely weightless… and then the ground was rushing up too fast and I landed hard on my side, hard enough to knock the air out of my lungs.
The pain of not being able to breathe was second only to having my arm engulfed by invisible flames. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t see. Couldn’t think. The panic returned tenfold, threatening to overwhelm me and drag me down to someplace I would never escape from.
Sobbing, choking on my own snot and spit, I forced my lungs to work. Forced my mouth to suck in air. Forced myself to breath. If I gave in now, I knew it would be over for me. I would turn into one those crying, mindless idiots Angelique had talked about. The ones who were most likely all dead.
I had to keep going. I had to run. There was no other option. Not if I wanted to stay alive. If Angelique caught me… If she caught me I was certain the pain I’d experienced so far would pale in comparison to the torture she had in mind.
I forced myself to stand, not even bothering to wipe the dirt and grass off my clothes before I started running again. Within a hundred feet a gap opened between the houses. I veered towards it, exchanging carefully tended lawns for cracked pavement as I jogged along a narrow road that dead-ended at the baseball field.
On this side of town - on my side of town - there were abandoned warehouses instead of pretty houses and dark alleys instead of perfect backyards. I stuck to the alleys. Cutting across the baseball field would have been faster, but it would have also meant completely exposing myself. At least the warehouses provided some sort of cover, and I stayed close to them as I navigated the twisting, trash-strewn alleyways with familiar ease. While other children had grown up playing at the local park, this dingy, dirty section of town had been my playground. I’d loved it here when I was a kid. It had always been the one place I could escape to when nothing else was going right. The one place no one would follow me. I one place I always felt safe.
Oh, the irony.
Fueling my body with the last lingering fumes of adrenaline left over from beating Angelique’s head in with a horseshoe - had I really felt guilty about that? I should have hit the bitch harder - I broke into a jog, then a run, and finally an all out sprint. I was so close to my goal I could taste it. I flew between the metal warehouses, focusing on the hard slap of my sneakers on asphalt and the drumming of my own heart.
The boy who stepped in front of me never had a chance.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A Guy With A Gun
We collided with the force of two freight trains coming together and went down in a tangle of arms and legs. I saw a startled pair of gray eyes, olive skin, and hair as black as mine before we pulled apart, both of us gasping for air.
In a move too quick for me to anticipate the boy pinned my hands behind my back and shoved me against the side of a warehouse. My chin bounced painfully off the rusted metal siding and blood, the taste of it salty and metallic and all too familiar, flooded my mouth. I tried to pull free, but the boy was too strong. He held me easily, as an adult would hold a writhing child, except I was pretty sure he wasn’t much older than me. Twisting my head to the side I spat out a stream of bloody saliva, narrowly missing the toe of his black sneaker.
“What are you doing out here?” he demanded in a low voice as he gave me a quick shake. I hit the warehouse again, this time striking my temple.
“Watch it,” I warned. It wasn’t an idle threat. After beating a girl half to death with a horseshoe, there really wasn’t anything left I wouldn’t be willing to do to secure my own safety. Something hard jutted into the side of my back as the boy leaned closer, pinning me in place with his body. A woodsy scent invaded my nostrils, pine mixed with something I couldn’t readily identify. “Loosen up, would you?” I snapped as the boy continued to hold me pinned against the wall as though I was the threat. “You’re killing my shoulders.”
He growled under his breath, but he did release his hold a fraction of an inch. It wasn’t a lot, but at least blood could start circulating through my wrists again. “Don’t you know what’s happening?
The boy growled under his breath, but he did release his grip a fraction of an inch. “Don’t you know what’s happening? Don’t you know what’s out there?”
“No.” The incredulous disbelief in the boy’s tone had me fighting to crane my neck around until I could catch a shadowed glimpse of his face. I saw thick, dark eyebrows drawn tight over stormy grey eyes. A strong nose, hooked at the end and slightly bent in the middle. Lips that were compressed into a tight scowl. Tousled hair, long enough to touch the collar of his black leather jacket and jaggedly cut at the ends. “Do you?”
Instead of answering my question, he decided to state the obvious. “You look like hell and you’re bleeding.”
“You should see the other girl,” I quipped.
His dark eyes met mine for a split second before they flicked down to my legs. “You’re bleeding a lot.”
Confused, I followed his gaze to my right knee. Sure enough there was a tear in my jeans about four inches across and blood had stained the denim an inky red. The cut looked deep. I must have gotten it when I tripped over the hose. I flexed my leg, wondering why I couldn’t feel it. Shock? Probably. “I fell. I was running away from one of those… those things and I fell. Listen, are you going to let me go or what? In case you haven’t noticed you’re a lot bigger than me and I’m not exactly in a position to kick your ass, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
He released my hands and stepped back. “I’m not worried.”
Rubbing my wrists, I slowly turned around to face him. His bored expression and air of indifference might have said otherwise, but I knew he was studying
me just as intently as I was studying him. We faced off for what felt like a small eternity, neither one of us willing to budge an inch. “Show me your teeth,” I said at last. “I need to know if you’re like the creep who kidnapped my best friend.”
One dark eyebrow lifted. “Show me yours first.”
My first instinct was to argue. I wasn’t exactly fond of following directions. But if there was ever a time to simply put up or shut up, it was here and now. I opened my mouth. “Nuh sivah.”
“English, please.”
“No silver. Now you go.”
“There are other ways to check, you know.” There was a note of unmistakable condescension in his tone, as though I was an idiot for not knowing how to tell someone like me and someone like Angelique apart. Well, fine. Let him think I was an idiot. He was still going to show me his teeth.
I edged sideways, not wanting a solid wall of steel at my back. Clouds shifted overhead, revealing the moon in little slivers of light. I wondered what time it was. Without a cell phone or a watch it was impossible to tell. I couldn’t even rely on my inner clock. I’d been twisted upside down and sideways so much in the past half an hour I was lucky I still knew my own name.
“Teeth,” I demanded. “Now.”
The boy’s smile was lazy, but above the careless slant of his mouth his eyes were hard as stone. “Are you giving me an order?”
“Damn straight.”
His lips peeled back. No silver fangs. I almost sagged in relief. I couldn’t deal with another monster. Not right now. Preferably not ever again.
Suddenly the boy stiffened, his head canting to one side. Before I could say a word he pulled something out of the waistband of his jeans and my eyes widened in shock.
“Is that a gun?” I didn’t know why, of all the things that had happened tonight, a gun would set me on edge, but it did. Maybe because people in Revere didn’t carry guns. Maybe because I wasn’t accustomed to seeing a boy my age packing heat (I had always wanted to use that term). Or maybe it was simply because my brain was on violence overload. Either way, I took a wary step back, my gaze trained on the small, sleek pistol as he cocked it with a sharp click and held it up against his right shoulder.
“This is a Beretta Elite semi-automatic double action.”
He might as well have been speaking Greek. Or Spanish. Much to my grandmother’s everlasting regret, I’d never learned her native language. “What does it do?”
“What does it do?” There was no ifs, ands, or buts about it this time. He definitely thought I was an idiot. “It kills the bad guys.”
“You can’t strangle them with your bare hands?” I’d meant it as a joke – the situation could use some serious lifting up – but the boy didn’t take it that way.
“If I have to.” His broad shoulders lifted and fell in a shrug, as though the idea of choking the life out of someone was no big deal. “But this is faster.”
I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. The boy looked down the alley over my shoulder, eyes narrowing at something in the shadows. Another one of the crazy silver teeth people? God I hoped not.
“Well, good luck.”
“Wait,” I gasped as he turned to go without so much as a final glance in my direction. “You’re not… are you leaving? You can’t leave!” Under normal circumstances I made it a point to stay as far away from the dark, brooding types as I possibly could. Previous lessons had taught me they were nothing but trouble with their intense stares and intellectual conversations about the meaning of life. But these weren’t normal circumstances, and given the choice between going it on my own or sticking with the guy with the gun, I was choosing the gun.
Every time.
I grabbed the boy’s arm and felt the rigid tautness of his muscles through his jacket. My fingers dug in, harder than I had intended. He didn’t so much as flinch. “You have to help me.” I didn’t like the desperate edge in my voice, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. I was desperate, in every sense of the word. “I live in the apartments out behind the old baseball field and my dad—”
“Shut up.”
“Whoa.” My eyes narrowed. “How about you slow your roll for a sec and—”
“We can’t talk here.” He turned and began walking swiftly down the alley, his steps silent on the asphalt. Left with little choice, I hurried after him, struggling to keep up as we went up one narrow strip and down another, ensnaring ourselves deeper and deeper into the twisted maze of warehouses. When I tripped – for the third time – he grabbed my wrist and ordered me to stay behind him or get lost.
Such a charmer.
Finally we stopped in front of a nondescript gray door. The boy kicked it open with one well-placed strike of his heel and I followed him inside. The door slammed shut behind me, plunging the room into absolute darkness. It smelled vaguely of urine, and something sickly sweet.
“Lights,” I said when I stepped to the left and bumped into something hard. “Lights would be nice.”
I heard the flick of a switch and then a single bulb buzzed to life, casting fluorescent light down on a jumble of mismatched chairs, old filing cabinets, and a large metal desk. An old storage unit, if I had to guess, one possibly owned by the high school or a retired teacher getting ready for their own feature special on Hoarders.
The boy lifted a brown folding chair from the mess of other chairs stacked haphazardly against the far wall and held it above his head. “Move away from the door,” he said curtly.
“A please wouldn’t kill you.”
“Move or get out.”
Ultimatums, much? I made a face, but because the last thing I wanted to do was go back out into the dark and the monsters, stepped reluctantly to the side, making room for the boy to jam the chair under the doorknob.
Absently pulling out a dead leaf from my hair, I wondered if my new friend was always so grumpy, or if his delightful personality only shined through during life threatening situations. Either way, I couldn’t be mad at him. Not really. A little disgruntled, maybe, but that’s only because for once someone was being ruder than me and I wasn’t quite sure what to do with myself.
I could dish out brooding, temperamental teenager all day long, but being on the receiving end of it was definitely a new experience.
“There.” He wiped his hands on his jeans. “That should hold them. This will be a good place to lay low for a few hours.”
“An hour?” I practically yelped, already shaking my head. Just because I didn’t want to go back outside didn’t mean I had the luxury of not going back outside. “No, I need to get home sooner than that. I need to find my dad and my best friend—”
“They’re looking for survivors. You go outside right now and they’ll tear you to shreds.” The boy spoke with a nonchalance that set the tiny hairs at the back of my neck on edge.
You go outside right now and they’ll tear you to shreds.
As though it were a normal thing. As though monsters with silver fangs dragging defenseless people out of their homes and cracking their backs against fences was an everyday occurrence.
Suddenly lying low for a few hours didn’t seem like such a bad idea.
“The best way for you to help your family is to stay alive,” the boy continued. “Now hop up on the desk.”
I studied him under the dark fringe of my lashes. The light had done nothing to soften his features. If anything he looked harder, meaner, and I was glad I’d stumbled into him. If I were going to rescue my dad and Travis I would rather do it with a badass by my side. But that didn’t mean I was going to start blindly following orders.
“Excuse me?”
He sighed and folded his arms over his chest. “This is not a democracy. I don’t want to help you. I’m doing it because it’s the right thing to do, but the moment you endanger my life you are on your own, do you understand?”
My expression turned skeptical. “What does my getting on the desk have to do with endangering your life?”
“When
I ask you to do something you do it, no questions asked.”
I’d never been very good at following directions. “And if I ask questions?”
“Then I walk,” he said flatly. “I should walk out right—”
“Okay, okay. Don’t get your panties in a bunch. I’m going, see? I’m getting on the desk.” I pushed a chair out of the way and jumped up on the metal desk. My feet clanged against the side, the sound extra loud in the small space. Leaning back on my palms, I scooted forward until I was sitting on the very edge. “What now, oh great and fearless leader?”
His gray eyes narrowed. “Let me see your knee.”
As if I had a choice. Before I could so much as nod he’d knelt down in front of my and rolled up my pant leg. When his fingers brushed against my bare skin all I could think was: thank God I shaved this morning. One hand cupped my calf while the other slowly probed around the edges of the wound. I heard a quiet intake of breath before he rocked back on his heels and glared up at me. “This is deep,” he said accusingly, as though it was my fault I’d been chased through the dark by a homicidal maniac.
“I know.” What I didn’t know was why he would be so concerned. All things considered, a little scratch on my knee was the least of my worries. With all the abuse my body had taken tonight I was lucky I wasn’t breathing through a tube.
“How are you still walking?”
I straightened my knee and bent towards it, studying the bloody scrape and the bits of grass and dirt that clung to the angry red skin. I guess it was pretty nasty looking. I sat up and glanced at the boy. Under his olive skin he suddenly looked pale and sweat gleamed on his forehead and upper lip. “Hey, you’re not going to faint or anything are you? Does blood gross you out? It grosses my friend Travis out. He can’t stand it. When we had to dissect frogs in seventh grade he literally turned green and fell over. They weren’t even bleeding.”
He shot me a look. “Blood does not gross me out.”
“Okay…” I said slowly. “Then why do you look so—”
The Lola Chronicles (Book 1): A Night Without Stars Page 8