by Tracey Ward
I watch him walk to my ‘bed’ and pick up a thin, threadbare blanket. It’s yellow. I don’t know why that makes it sadder to me, but it does.
“You don’t have to sleep by the door,” I tell him faintly.
He turns slowly, looking at me with his large, golden eyes that see too much. “Where would I sleep?”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t make it harder for me than it already is.”
He grins slightly, but then he nods. “Okay. Sorry. And yeah, if you’re okay with it, I’ll sleep next to you. I wasn’t sure you’d want to now that we’re here.”
I smile. “You mean now that we’re out of prison?”
“Is it weird that I don’t feel any freer now that we’re out?”
“Is it weird that I felt better in the Vashons’ prison than I did as a guest at the cannibals’ table?”
“You really hate them.”
I roll my eyes. “And you don’t? They’re disgusting.”
“They’re different,” he replies diplomatically.
“The bad kind, not the interesting kind. Except to Trent. He seemed fascinated,” I say sarcastically.
Ryan goes to the door to drop the security bar across it, locking us in for the night.
“Better to act fascinated than disgusted if we’re going to work with them. I don’t like the way Andy was looking at you.”
I nod in agreement. “He’ll kill me if he gets the chance.”
“See, I don’t feel like that worries you as much as it should.”
“Eh, I’ve made it this far. Trick is to never trust anyone. Never let your guard down.”
He sits down by the bed and begins unlacing his shoes. “Are you going to sleep with your knife on your hip?”
“I’d be stupid not to.”
“Should I be worried I’ll wake up with it in my gut the way I woke up to your elbow in my face?”
I wince, remembering the damage I did to him on Vashon Island. It’s reflex, I can’t control it! But I do feel bad about it.
“Maybe,” I reply weakly.
Ryan chuckles. “I’ll take my chances. I’ll keep my knife on me too, just so we’re even. Just in case you get handsy.”
“I won’t.”
“Not even a little? I’ll pretend not to notice.”
“Maybe you should sleep by the door after all,” I grumble, heading for the bathroom.
“Come on, I’m kidding!”
I don’t answer. I do my business slowly, freaked out by the strange feeling of not being freaked out. Trent is on my roof and Ryan is in my bed, and that’s okay. I’m eerily fine with that. Not even just fine. I’m… happy.
When I come back out I find Ryan lounging on my bed. He smiles up at me, golden brown from hair to eyes to skin, and there’s so much of that amber glow that it’s stupid. He’s ridiculously beautiful to the point of being annoying, but I still like it.
I plop down across from him. “So we’re siding with the psychos, aren’t we?”
He sits up slowly, his arms coming to rest on his legs and his hands held loosely together. “We don’t have another choice.”
“I don’t like it.”
“No one does, and that’s your problem: you think because we’re willing to work with them that we like them. I don’t. They freak me out but we need their help, and if we were seriously willing to do business with The Hive, we’re desperate enough to do business with these guys.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Joss,” he says emphatically, “we’re pretty freaking desperate here. Do you want to free your friends or not?”
“They’re not really friends,” I reply weakly.
“They were a few days ago.”
“A lot has changed since then.”
“Enough to make you change your mind about saving them?”
I bite my lip, worrying it between my teeth as I stare at his face. “You died,” I say quietly.
His expression softens. “Not completely.”
“Close enough.’
“It doesn’t change anything.”
“It does for me.”
His mouth tightens slightly. “What are you saying? You don’t want to try to save someone, basically everyone, because I got hurt?”
His voice is becoming agitated. He’s annoyed with me.
“How’s your shoulder?” I ask pointedly, feeling just as annoyed.
I still worry about that injury on him. I still wonder if he’ll get a fever someday soon and I’ll have to end him. It’s another reason I avoided people for as long as I did: it wasn’t just because I got sick of watching them die—I got sick of being the one to beat down their reanimated corpses.
“It’s fine. I’m always getting hurt, Joss. I got hurt before I met you and I’ll get hurt again in the future. So will Trent. So will you. Look at your arm. You think that doesn’t kill me to see every day? But you can’t let that stop you from doing what’s right. This isn’t just about the people in the MOHAI. This is about everyone. Everyone trapped in the Colonies, everyone living in the wild afraid of the roundups.”
I clench my hands together tightly, feeling my chest pinch and my skin go clammy. “You’re wo—” I try, but the words die on my tongue. It’s just too… much. It’s all too much. I stare down at my hands, finding the words easier when I’m not looking at his face. “You’re worth more to me than everyone else on the earth combined.”
He doesn’t answer. The room feels tight in the confines of pure silence. I keep my eyes fixed on the growing sunlight flickering over the skin on my hands, the scars and scrapes highlighted in deep shadows until my own flesh looks foreign and strange. I feel different. I feel afraid of my own body, unfamiliar in my own skin. I feel like I’m becoming something or someone I’m not sure I know how to be.
Ryan moves. He’s on his knees in front of me, his face hovering over mine and his eyes filling my vision. He’s all I can see, all I can hear, and the room suddenly feels like it doesn’t exist. Nothing exists beyond his face and the places where his skin touches mine. His hands are warm and dry on my arms, my shoulders, my neck, my chin. He pulls me toward him until my lips meet his and my eyes fall closed. I forget how to breathe, so he breathes for me. In and out, slow and even with the beat of his heart. I can feel it under my hand where I’ve rested my palm on his chest.
Thump-thump…thump-thump…thump-
It skips a beat when I rise up on my knees in front of him, my body coming in line with his. He freezes, inside and out, just for a second. Then his heart is racing, taking mine with it, and his tongue brushes across my lips as his hands lower to my waist. He pulls me against him until I can’t feel his heartbeat under my hand anymore. I feel it everywhere—I feel him everywhere—and it’s so thrilling and so claustrophobic I want to scream. I want to pull him to me until it hurts and I want to push him away so I can run down the halls until I find stairs up and out, into the air where I can breathe. Where I can find the shadows to hide inside that will keep me safe from everything I’m so afraid of. I fight with myself to stay put, to hold onto him, to find out how much I can take, while my instincts are telling me to run—that there’s more to fear in this world than zombies, cannibals, Colonists, and gangs.
Suddenly I’m under the boat again, with no breath and my heart in my throat. I’m in the water and he’s drowning. I can’t save him. He’s slipping from my fingers. I keep going under for him but I can’t get him free and Trent isn’t there to help me and Ryan is fading. His heart is failing as I’m failing him. He’s dying. He’s gone. It’s so real I can hear the water lapping against the hull of the boat. I can see the bubbles against my eyelids as they get smaller, fewer. As they burst against the surface, his life leaving him in tiny increments that I’m powerless to stop.
His pale face in the darkness. My heart slowing with his, confused and lost. Uncertain where to go without him. It aches in my chest and I know.
I
love him.
I love him and I will lose him.
I pull my mouth from his and clamp it shut tightly, worried he’ll hear the sob begging to escape. I hug him to me, clinging to him in a way I haven’t done since the night in The Hive when I was so relieved he was alive I lost my mind and threw my body against his. He holds onto me, his breath uneven in my ear and his hands splayed out on my back.
“If I say it,” he whispers, “will you run away from me?”
I know what he’s asking. I know what he’s thinking about saying because it’s exactly the same thing I’m thinking right now. It’s the same thing that’s scaring the crap out of me and making me an emotional mess that could fall apart at any second. It’s a dangerous thing to think or feel, but it’s even more toxic to say. It’s a truth that I can’t handle—not yet, maybe never. It’s one more thing that will change the way I look at the world and live my life and it could be the last thing—the big final thing—that gets me killed. Or worse: it could kill him.
“Yes.”
He sighs, his hands moving slowly up and down my back. “Joss, I—”
“I said I’ll run,” I interrupt, my voice firm as my fingers clench his shirt in tight fistfuls of anxiety. “I will go full Olympic sprinter on you. Road Runner style. I will burst through the wall like the Kool-Aid Man to get away.”
He chuckles. “Okay, okay. I wasn’t going to say it. Calm down.”
“I can’t, Ryan. You can’t say it. Please don’t say it.”
“I don’t need to say it because you obviously know it.”
I press my forehead against his shoulder, hiding my face in the crook of his neck.
“And I know it too,” he breathes, his voice deep in my ear.
In my blood.
“We’ll side with the psychos,” he whispers against my skin, “we’ll free your friends, we’ll take down the stadiums, we’ll destroy the Colony in the south, we’ll dethrone the guy pulling all the strings, and then…”
“Then what?”
I feel his hand running over my hair, smoothing it along my neck. His fingers brush my skin. “We’ll be free then—all of us. Isn’t that enough?”
“No.”
He chuckles softly. “What else is there, Joss?”
I lift my head, look in his eyes. Then I kiss him. I kiss him like I’m losing him, because I feel like I am—and even though that’s crazy, even though we’re closer right now than we’ve ever been, I still feel it. I have a sick, sinking feeling that he’s a punishment. He’s a promise dangled in front of me only to be ripped away; I just don’t know when yet. I’ve never wanted anything the way I want him. I’ve never needed anything this way. He’s my weakness, my soft spot, and I love him and I want him but I fear him and I hate him. I should run. I should get away before I’ve fallen too far and it’s too late to turn back, but I think I passed the point of no return a long time ago.
Win or lose, live or die, I’m with him all the way.
Chapter Six
Twelve hours later, as the sun is disappearing behind the ragged Seattle skyline, I find myself once again going down the rabbit hole. We aren’t sure exactly how we’re going to meet up with the cannibals again, so we go to where Andy brought us above ground and hope for the best. What we get is an entourage. Six cannibals are waiting for us and it feels creepily similar to the first time they took us underground just last night. A lot has changed since then. I see them differently now. I understand they aren’t bloodthirsty vampires luring us to their lair to suck the marrow from our bones, but it doesn’t mean slipping down into that dark unknown isn’t still a little freaky.
I assume that we’re going to be led back to the main chamber where the cannibals all live to get another lesson in eating your loved ones, but instead we’re immediately taken in the opposite direction. Even underground, I know where we’re headed.
North.
“So this is really happening, isn’t it?” I mutter.
“Looks like it,” Ryan replies. He looks at me sideways as we slosh through the two inches of standing water in this tunnel. At least I hope it’s only water. “Are you ready?”
“As I’ll ever be, I guess.”
“Are you worried?”
“About what?”
“About going back.”
How does he do that? How the hell does he know I’m nervously chewing the inside of my cheek raw at the thought of going inside the MOHAI again?
“Maybe,” I admit reluctantly.
“I don’t blame you.”
“Are you worried?”
“Yep.”
“About what?”
“Getting this close to a Colony. You spend all your time avoiding them, it feels pretty stupid walking right into one.”
I can’t stop the chuckle that escapes my lips and echoes through the tunnel. Ryan smiles down at me.
“What’s funny?”
“I think I’m relieved.”
“Relieved you’re not the only one who thinks this is stupid?”
“Bingo.”
“For what it’s worth,” Trent chimes in behind me, “I think it’s stupid too.”
“That’s pretty comforting actually,” Ryan says.
I shake my head. “So if we all think it’s so stupid, why are we doing it?”
“Because,” Elijah’s voice breaks out from ahead of us in the darkness, “something so idiotic could never be predicted.”
“Are we crawling in through the toilets?”
Elijah comes fully into view, the light from a torch lit behind him giving a grim line to his face. He’s smiling. “Like little baby crocodiles,” he says happily.
“We can’t go in through the basement,” another guy says, all business and stern stares. Oddly enough, I kind of like him. “There’s no clean way to get in quietly. The walls are too thick—we’d have to blast and there goes our cover. But we lucked out. There’s a drain. One nearly the size of a manhole. We’ll remove it, climb up and in. It’s that easy.”
“What kind of drain is that room in?” I ask, feeling sweat break out on my neck under my hair.
“A large shower room.”
“Ugh,” I gag, feeling surprisingly sick.
Flashes of the first day at the Colony flip through my mind: the creepy thorough cleansing I got, the rough scrub of exfoliates, the smell of the harsh soaps, the lice shampoos, the bitter smell of bleach on the floors and the walls.
Caroline.
I feel Ryan’s hand on my elbow. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I reply, pulling it together. “It’s not my favorite room is all.”
His grip tightens gently before he releases me.
“You’ll go in with my people,” Elijah tells us, gesturing to the sixteen men and women he’s brought with him. It’s not the twenty he promised, but if you throw our three into the mix it’s close enough. “You’ll hold back, wait in the shower room. They’ll do a sweep. They’ll take control of the building. When it’s done, when it’s safe, they’ll bring you out in the open.”
“Why aren’t we going up with them?” I ask irritably. “Shouldn’t I be front and center in the fight where the Colonists can see me? I thought that was the whole point.”
“You’re too valuable to risk. Containment first. You’re there for negotiations, not fighting.”
“Ugh,” I groan again.
Elijah sighs with annoyance. “Something else bothering you?”
“No,” I lie.
“Will you wear that sour expression when they see you or do you think you can manage to look at least a little bit more pleasant?”
“If I did, they wouldn’t recognize me.”
Some of the cannibals exchange uneasy glances. I’m losing what little faith we’ve somehow managed to gain from them.
“Ryan will do the talking,” I assure Elijah. “I’ll be quiet.”
“Silent would be better,” someone mutters in the darkness.
“It’ll be fine,” R
yan promises them.
We head off down the tunnels after that, parting ways with Elijah. He’s headed back home to tell his people how perfectly this plan will go. How in sync we all are and how excited he is for the future. They’ll buy his lies, gobbling them up like sweet meat treats, because he’s a good leader and his words can cover up the scary truth that is me.
“Where have you been?”
I scowl to my left. One of the cannibals has crept up beside me, somehow quiet even walking in the water. His face is pale and bright against the dark interior of the tunnel. It sticks out sharply above his black clothing, making it look like his head is floating six feet above the ground. He’s looking down at me with dark eyes and a small smile that gives me chills.
“What do you mean?”
His smile broadens. “I mean, where have you been hiding?”
“With the Westies,” I lie, grabbing the first gang name out of the air that I can think of.
“No, no, no,” the man sings quietly, shaking his head. “You don’t look like a whore. You don’t talk like a whore, and you definitely don’t walk like a whore. You weren’t with the Westies.”
“How do you know I wasn’t someone’s private pet?”
His answer is a long hard stare. He doesn’t blink.
“I was alone,” I finally admit reluctantly.
I look away and pick up the pace. Ryan is a few feet ahead of me, talking quietly with one of Elijah’s men. I’ll feel better when I close that gap.
“Really? How did a small thing like you make it out there alone?”
I shrivel inside when he matches my pace easily, his long legs striding through the water that I feel like I’m thrashing through. He has a hulking grace that’s seriously annoying, and the way he talks… it’s weird. His tone is too even, the cadence of his voice almost a constant sing-song.
“I managed.”
“All alone,” he muses. “It’s exciting, isn’t it?”
“Too bad it’s over,” Trent says. I glance over my shoulder, surprised to find him walking directly behind me. He’s watching the tall cannibal with dark interest. “She’s joined the Hyperion. She’s no longer living alone.”
The tall creeper doesn’t acknowledge Trent. I feel his eyes still on me. “How lucky for everyone.”