When Nothing Is All You've Got

by Kirsty Dallas

  9

  NADA

  It had been a week since the fight with Zeb, and I’d won . . . just. I had never fought a man in the ring, and it had taken me a while to find my rhythm a way to absorb the more brutal, powerful punches. In the end, I’d fought dirty. Zeb had grown cocky, finding sick pleasure in the blood that dripped from my body. In that moment, he assured himself he’d won, and for a split second, he let down his guard. With a good strong kick to the groin, he went down, then a round-house kick to the head laid him out cold. Zeb had gone for the tender flesh on my back, still healing from my whipping, but in the end, my stamina and perseverance had seen me take another win.

  Now, I was stretched out on my bed, my body a colorful display of black, purple, and yellow bruises. My split lip had mostly healed—it helped I didn’t smile much—and I could see out of my swollen right eye again. Ribs that burned every time I moved were another story; they were definitely bruised, possibly cracked. The pain was intense, but the thing about pain—it reminded me I was alive. I relished the pain. I fed off it like a sick junkie yearning for another hit. Every time my mind threatened to drag me into darkness, I moved, and my body screamed in protest, and I felt fucking alive.

  Regan sat on the floor beside me, sewing an outfit of some description. Something white, so obviously for one of the innocents. She was talking about the world above, a story about a river that twisted through mountains, falling from staggering heights into an open pool. The story she recited came from a junkie NIM dealer, so I questioned its authenticity, but in the end, I didn’t care. I still loved to sit and listen, taking Regan’s words in and cataloguing them in a place for later. My hand idly toyed with one of the many braids that fell to her waist. I marveled in the softness of the long length of hair, caressing the blonde fibers between my fingers, running the thin plait between my thumb and forefinger. While I wasn’t a cuddly or affectionate person, touching certain things both absorbed and anchored me. Touch was real, sound, scent, and taste could be misunderstood, but touch couldn’t. Whether soft or hard, rough or smooth, wet or dry, touch never lied.

  “Kitten described it as a place of green, white, and blue all at once. The smell is like the earth at the deepest point in the Underworld, but fresh and clean.”

  I couldn’t imagine it, but I tried to, and I allowed Regan’s words to bring me the peace I had been striving for ever since Kingsley had publicly whipped me. It had been Shadow who held the whip, but it was Kingsley who commanded it, so he might as well have held the fucking thing, too. Shadow hadn’t spoken a word to me since the punishment. He’d been around, but he’d kept his distance, watching from the shadows that were like a lover’s embrace to him. I wasn’t sure how I felt about him anymore. His eyes held both desire and hatred, his body seemed coiled tight with need, but I wasn’t sure if it was a need to hurt, or pleasure. He’d punished and shamed me publicly, and yet while the whip had lashed my body, I somehow knew there was a deep guilt and burning rage under the layers of detachment he tried to hide behind.

  Sighing, I pushed all thoughts of the confusing man aside and focused on Regan’s voice. Like a computer sifting through information, my brain moved the forest and waterfall into the part of my brain that would forever remember the vision. My brain was an enigma to me. I remembered things. Everything. Dejohn called it as an eidetic memory, someone who remembered things clearly, with only a small amount of exposure. He cautioned me to hide the skill, saying I would be killed for such a fascinating mind. I didn’t find it fascinating, it was just the way I was made, but having it put me in even greater danger.

  “Knock, knock,” came Dejohn’s soft voice at my door.

  Glancing over my shoulder, I noticed his full arms and tried to gingerly scramble from my bed.

  “Dump day,” I whispered reverently.

  Once, every three months, the world above would gather all their unwanted rubbish and dump it into the Wild Zone. Someone with a voice up above kept challenging the politicians for the rights of the innocents trapped below. In an uncharacteristic display of compassion, unwanted goods were systematically delivered to us, along with preserved food stored in jars, sometimes even fresh meat. One person’s trash was another person’s treasure. That was a saying Dejohn had taught me when I was still too young to understand it. I certainly understood it now as I focused on the objects in his arms with greedy eyes.

  “Dey need to go to da library when you’re done,” he murmured. He didn’t need to remind me; I always took the books down to the big stone room that had been turned into a library of sorts. I didn’t need to keep them; they stayed with me long after they were gone, in my mind like perfect pictures that would never fade.

  Dejohn handed Regan a large bag full of old clothes, and she squealed with glee.

  “I’m gonna go show George,” she said excitedly, running out of my room. Her and George had found a quick, easy friendship in the couple of weeks they’d been roommates. It wasn’t a sexual relationship, but one more of a father and daughter, born of respect and trust, both of which were scarce in the Underworld.

  “How are yuh ribs?” Dejohn asked.

  I was already sitting crossed legged on my bed with the first book open. I traced my fingers over the book’s title, Roses Are Red. Inside were pictures of the most beautiful flowers I had ever seen.

  “Roses,” I murmured, wishing I could reach through the pages and just touch one.

  “Ribs,” Dejohn grunted from the doorway.

  “Fine, healing.”

  “Yuh a deep pool of information, Nada.”

  I looked up and smiled. It was a foreign feeling on my face, and I resisted the temptation to raise my fingers to my lips and touch the unusual sensation.

  The answering smile on Dejohn’s face was priceless. His entire demeanor changed; his hard eyes softened, and his gentle smile was reassuring and calming. “Yuh ’ave Regan or mi rewrap dem after yuh showa.”

  The door shut with a quiet click, and I lost myself in the book. Pink roses, red roses, white roses, blue roses, even black roses. They were a remarkable flower with petals that wrapped around each other in a loving embrace. Sometimes they were coiled tight, almost protectively, and other times they peeled back to open themselves to the world, a blushing example of gentle pride and a fuck you to anyone who dared insult their beauty. Their stems were lined with vicious thorns ready to stab at the hand that might dare touch them. They were brutal yet beautiful.

  As I reached the center of the book, something slipped out from between the pages and fell into my lap. I stared at it a long moment before gently picking it up and raising it towards the light to better observe my discovery. With a hesitant finger, I touched it. It was dry, like a fragile leaf of paper, and a dirty red color that reminded me of old blood. The stem was more of a dusty grey rather than green, but it held a formidable thorn. A rose, a single red rose. It had been flattened between the pages of the book, preserved and yet not. It was clearly dead and yet the red in the dried petals defied time and still held their hue. I marveled at the small object, wanting desperately to touch it, yet so afraid at the same time. The fragile, yet defiant thing reminded me of myself, soft yet brutal. It was as if I was seeing myself clearly for the first time, understanding my need for peace and tenderness, but the warrior in me trained and ready for battle. The rose symbolized all that I never knew I was.

  I searched my room for something I could put the flower in for safe keeping but came up short. Glancing down at the book, I sighed and slipped the rose back within its pages. I guess this was one book that wouldn’t make it to the library.

  “What’cha got there?”

  I hadn’t even heard the door open, and I silently cursed myself for getting so lost in my thoughts. Shadow’s gravelly voice washed over me like a familiar blanket, warm and safe. When did I begin to equate safety to this man? When I glanced up at him with irritation, there was nothing warm or safe about the hard look he gave me in return.

  “Long
time no see, Shadow,” I murmured, tossing the book aside with nonchalance. I didn’t like people knowing about the things that meant something to me. The moment someone saw that look, they tried to take it away from you.

  “Got a drop off. Thought you might like to join me.”

  “It’s the middle of the day,” I noted, curiosity suddenly forcing all thoughts of the rose to disappear.

  “Yup, you comin’?” His eyes lingered for only a moment on the book at my side, and before I had a chance to answer, he was gone. With only a slight grimace, I stood and repositioned the book of roses under my mattress, leaving the other two books I had yet to read sitting on top of it. Then I grabbed my jacket and locked my door before turning to head in the direction Shadow had disappeared.

  He’d surprisingly paused to wait for me by the doorway that led through the open arena that at this time of the day was bristling with activity. People were selling their wares and offering trade. With a drop-off today, there would be new produce, and Kingsley would have his lackeys out trading it off for anything that might add power to his continuously growing kingdom. I followed Shadow away from the busy chaos, and we steadily wound higher into the cavernous world.

  “Man or woman?” I asked.

  “No idea.”

  “Have they been there since daybreak?”

  “No idea.”

  “Who called it in?”

  “No idea.”

  “Huh, daddy’s little gofer, just doing as your told.”

  His speed didn’t surprise me, but the venom in his eyes did. Suddenly, I was pinned against the wall, my ribs howling in pain, my abused and healing body feeling every inch of the hard wall at my back and the even harder man at my front. Through that pain, I still managed to slip my fingers around the hilt of my knife, but something made me pause. I didn’t pull it free from the sheath, but I kept it within reach.

  “I’m nobody’s fuckin’ bitch,” he growled.

  Somehow I managed to raise a brow through the haze of pain and gifted him with my best sardonic expression.

  “You are Kingsley’s right hand man, his very own assassin, are you not?”

  Shadow seemed to fight for something to say, but he knew I was right, as much as he evidently didn’t want to believe it. As fast as the rage had engulfed him, it seemed to bleed from his body until he softened his hold on me. Dark eyes, much like my own, skittered around my face, searching, probing, and eventually softening, too. His gaze dropped to my hand that rested on my knife, before settling back on my face.

  “You’re hurtin’,” he murmured.

  “I’m not,” I argued.

  At that, he pressed his body hard against mine, and I hissed as my ribs betrayed my composure. When he raised a hand to push against my side, my body grew tense, ready for the flare of pain.

  “Liar,” he whispered in my ear. The hand that sat precariously close to my battered ribs was so warm and gentle that I could do little more than stare back at the man whose unexpected soft touch was completely at war with the hard, dangerous man I knew. “You need to be better prepared next time. There’s gonna be another fight in two weeks. Scotty and Timber are both frothing at the mouth for a go at you.”

  I briefly wondered why he was telling me this; Kingsley would rather wait until the last minute so I had less time to prepare. Indignation that he suggested I was unprepared for my last fight lasted only seconds before I conceded to the fact he was right. I’d gone in arrogant; too many wins had made me cocky, and I assumed taking down Zeb would be no different to taking on a big, butch female. I had been wrong.

  “I hope Timber gets first chance in the ring,” I finally admitted.

  “Why?”

  “Because he wants to fight me and fuck me at the same time. He’s the kind of man who would dig a knife between my shoulder blades while fucking me on my knees. I’ve been dying to take him out.”

  Shadow drew in a deep breath; the rage filling those dark eyes captivated me.

  “He tried somethin’?”

  “He was there that night,” I murmured, studying his face, trying to peel away the layers of anger, hurt, betrayal, and lust in an effort to find out exactly who this man was. “He didn’t participate, but he got off watching. He left before you got there.” It was a long moment before Shadow reined in the fury that caused his body to vibrate with discontent. The entire time I watched him, trying to see him, the real him. My hand slipped away from my knife and even though Shadow held me against the wall, restrained and vulnerable, I didn’t feel any fear. Dark, stormy eyes regarded me until a smile kicked up the corner of his mouth.

  “You can’t see me and it pisses you off, right?” he said after a moment’s silence. He looked smug. His smile had grown, and I leaned in closer, looking at the slight concave at each cheek that suggested dimples. How could anyone in the Underworld possibly have dimples? Because they came from a previous life, a life where the man actually smiled and laughed, a life above the ground. The thought slammed into me and almost rendered me speechless. Shadow had been another man once, a good man, a man who smiled and most likely laughed.

  “I see you.”

  His smug grin disappeared. “What do you see?”

  “I see confusion. You don’t understand what you feel for me, but you remember it, from the other world. You probably even felt it for another girl, but I’m not like her, am I? You don’t understand why you feel something other than hatred for me.” He moved back just slightly, enough to look down and really see me. “You’re also afraid of it. To have something in this world means you have something to lose.”

  My hand rose of its own accord, my fingers practically throbbing with the need to touch him. Ever so slowly, my fingertip moved to his jaw, and I followed the simple, feather light caress down his cheek. The stubble beneath my finger was jagged and rough, but as I moved my finger higher, right beneath his shocked eyes with those gentle lines, it softened. I marveled that a single inch of this man could be so soft. I swept my finger around his eye, back down his jaw and over the Adam’s apple at his throat that bobbed as he swallowed. His skin was warm, and the feel of him under my fingers almost electric.

  Shadow abruptly pulled away and kept moving until his back came to rest upon the stone wall behind him. My arm lowered to sit comfortably on the hilt of my knife. With thick arms crossed over his wide chest in a defiant posture, he glared at me. It was the first time I had ever stood before Shadow and been able to openly observe him. His arms were adorned in tattoos, from the shoulders to the knuckles. More peeked out from beneath his black wife-beater, and I wondered if they extended down his stomach and legs. There was no rhyme or reason to the display of art; some pictures were of skulls, one clearly female and drawn amongst the petals of a black rose, another of a wolf with saliva dripping from its canines, another of a tree, its roots digging deep within the soil. A curious blend of life and death painted all over his body.

  “Like what you see?” he asked as my gaze leveled on his eyes.

  “Sometimes,” I confessed, and my honesty clearly surprised him.

  “Newbie in the hole, and I hear she’s a beauty!” came Scotty’s loud, booming voice as he appeared at the end of the corridor.

  “I get first dibs filling her holes,” Timber crudely remarked from somewhere behind him.

  “You couldn’t fill your fist, your dicks so fucking small,” laughed another familiar voice further back. Ginger, the redheaded soldier with manic eyes, had joined the collection party. What a way to be greeted into the Underworld.

  “I thought you should be here for this collection,” Shadow murmured as he stepped out of the dark alcove he had found himself in. I was left speechless. He knew. He knew the new inmate was a female, and he knew the collection crew was the kind to maim and break before she even had a chance, and he’d brought me to protect her.

  “Yo, Shadow, you fucking scared me, man!” Scotty exclaimed, clutching the knife that had been holstered at his hip.

&nbs
p; “Put that away before you cut Timber’s tiny dick off,” Shadow growled, while Scotty and Ginger burst out laughing. I stood a little taller and forced away the signs of pain my body was still carrying. Stepping forward, I made my presence known. The men’s laughter immediately stopped.

  “What the fuck? You getting your dick wet up here in the fresh air?” Timber murmured.

  Shadow didn’t speak; he reacted. It was what Shadow did best. He grabbed Timber around the throat and squeezed; the bulging of Timber’s deep-set green eyes proof that Shadow’s grip was as deadly as he promised.

  “You got a problem with that, Timber? I heard you prefer to watch. Is that because your dick is so small?” Scotty laughed nervously. I, however, remained still and watchful, wondering where Shadow was going with this. “I’m gonna let you in on a little secret, Timber.” The man under his brutal grip gurgled. “See that girl over my shoulder? That woman? Her name is Nada, and she’s fuckin’ mine. If you, or anyone else, so much as touch a hair on her head outside the ring, you become mine, and not in a good time, suck my dick kind of way. You feelin’ me, Timber?”

  MINE. The word tumbled around my head, and I wasn’t sure if it belonged in a place where I held things dear, or in a place that existed only for revenge and death.

  “Let me make it clear: you fuckin’ touch her outside the cage, and I will kill you. I have Kingsley’s fuckin’ blessing, so don’t bother about runnin’ off to spill the news and lick the cum off the end of his wet dick, like the good little bitch you are.”