by G. P. Ching
I’ll fry him before I let him get any further. “Please no. Leave me alone.”
“Pit,” Bella says. She’s standing in the doorway in nothing but a short, silky kimono and her red collar. “Alpha wants to see you.”
Pit glances over his shoulder and backs off a quarter of an inch. “She’s not wearing her collar,” he says indignantly.
Bella shrugs. “Alpha wants to see you, now.”
“Bullshit. You’re trying to distract me from taking what’s mine.”
“I’ll tell him you refused.” Bella turns to leave, flipping the bangs of her silky black bob out of her eyes.
Pit slams his fist on the folding table and storms from the room, pushing Bella as he passes. Her body slaps the wall, the side of her head bouncing off the concrete bricks. “I’ll ask him myself and you better pray you’re telling the truth,” Pit growls.
I run to her side. “Are you hurt?”
“No, but you’d better hustle and find your collar, New Girl. I doubt it’s going to take long for Pit to figure out I made the whole thing up.”
I run for the basket and start to gather the scattered clothing. Bella helps me. “It was hard for me too in the beginning,” she says, ushering me into the hall with my basket of now wrinkled laundry. “When Sting took me, I was an Uppercrust.” She scoffs. “I wanted to be a doctor one day.”
“Took you? So you aren’t here by choice?”
She snorts. “Not any more than you or any of the other women here. Except maybe Sophie and that’s because she doesn’t know anything else. I guess you could say it’s our choice not to leave, one way or another.” She draws a finger across her neck. “No one has ever made it out alive. If the mutts don’t get you, the Greens will and they are much, much worse.”
“You’re running from the Greens too?”
She gives me a strange look. “Why else would I be here?”
“But you said you were an… Uppercrust.” I’ve heard the term before and assumed it meant someone who was wealthy and influential in Green society.
We jog up the stairs and pause in front of Korwin’s apartment. The look she gives me is positively deadly. “I’ll forgive you for the faux pas because you’re new, but we don’t like to talk about the past around here. And we never, ever go out without our collars.” She pushes back the door.
Korwin startles in bed at the rumble, rubbing his face and propping himself up on his arms. “What’s going on?”
Bella shoves me into the room. “I found your woman in the laundry room without her collar.”
“What?” Korwin’s voice is reproachful. He bounds out of bed and snatches the red collar from the dresser, wrapping it around his fist.
“Good thing I found her too. Pit was about to stake his claim in a way you wouldn’t have cared for.”
Violently, Korwin tears the basket from my hands and throws it against the wall. It hits with a crack of plastic on concrete. I jump and give a high-pitched squeak as the clothes fly across the bed. I try to back out the door but he grabs my shoulder.
“Leave us,” he growls at Bella.
“She’s new, Ace. I talked to her.”
“Bella, walk out and close the door now,” Korwin says through his teeth.
She obeys. The door isn’t fully closed before Korwin’s fist flies toward my face.
20
I scream, expecting Korwin’s punch to connect with my jaw. Instead, it skims past my cheek and collides with his opposite palm with a resounding crack. Confused, I raise my eyes to his.
“You need to learn your place,” he yells, and punches his palm again. He places one finger in front of his lips. On bare feet, he crosses the apartment to press his ear against the door. After a few seconds, he turns his face back toward me.
I’m shaking and tears have welled in my lower lids. No matter how much I sniff, I can’t stop them from spilling.
“Lydia…” Korwin approaches and gently cradles my face in his hands. Wiping the tears from my cheeks, he pulls me into a firm embrace. “I’m sorry it’s like this here. It’s not the way you should be treated, I admit. It’s just the way it is,” he whispers. He kisses me on the forehead, then slips the collar around my neck and buckles it into place.
I recognize my own words, although I sense no malevolence in the way he says them. “I said almost exactly the same thing to you.”
“You did? When?”
“In Hemlock Hollow. About the paintings.”
“See how that turned out? I should have listened to you.” He smiles sadly.
“As I should listen to you now. If we’re going to stay here, I’ll have to be smarter about things.”
“If…” He turns away from me and reaches for the basket. I help him gather up the clothes. “Are you sure I can’t convince you to go back?” He nudges the collar around my neck. “This place isn’t for you, Lydia.”
I shake my head. “I told you. I’m not going anywhere without you. Whatever we decide to do, we do it together.”
“I can’t go back to the Lapps,” he mutters. “You don’t know what it was like.”
“I heard.”
“What?”
“Jeremiah told me. Well, Jacob Bender overheard Abram’s confession to Isaac. He was intentionally hard on you. He wanted to tempt you to leave. Abram started the fire to frame you.”
“He admitted it?”
“Yes. In private confession.”
“It was bad, Lydia. I was practically shunned in that house. No one spoke to me. If I wasn’t at the table, they wouldn’t call me to dinner.” Korwin’s face reddens as if the memories are both embarrassing and painful. “I can’t do it for another year.”
“But…”
“But what?”
I frown toward the floor. It’s an intimate question I must ask him, but I have to know. “What about your baptism?”
Korwin’s eyes shift away from me.
“Do you still believe in God, Korwin?”
He groans and runs a hand through his hair. “I don’t know. Probably. Maybe.”
All the air rushes from me like I’ve been punched in the gut. I take a few slow, deep breaths before I react, trying my best to rein in the emotions that threaten to explode from me. “When we first met, I could tell you thought I was silly for believing, but I thought… you were almost baptized, Korwin. Are you telling me, during all our time in Hemlock Hollow, you never believed in God?”
“I thought I did, for a while. But then I wondered why. Why were the Lapps so cruel to me? Why was the world so cruel to us? We don’t even know if we can safely be together physically, Lydia. What kind of God does that to people? Makes us fall in love, makes us want only each other, and then makes being together this horrifically risky act. Why?”
“It’s not our place to ask why.”
He scoffs. “Or maybe there is no one to ask. Isn’t it easier to believe that there is no mastermind in the sky? Maybe this is all chance.” He pauses. My eyes are filled with tears and my chest is weighted. I take shallow breaths. “I don’t know. I’m just saying… the circumstances… It’s a difficult leap to make.”
Nodding slowly, I bite my lower lip. My mind races with the implications. Am I willing to make this sacrifice for Korwin? Have I already made it? My head aches thinking about it. But deep inside, I refuse to accept Korwin’s change of heart. If he believed once, maybe he’ll believe again.
“Then we can’t go back to Hemlock Hollow,” I say.
“No.”
“Where else can we go? We both hate the Liberty Party. David is on the council now.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” he says, extending his hand. “Are you saying that David, the traitor who turned my father in to the Greens and shot you full of Nanomem, is on the leadership council of the Liberty Party?”
“Yes.”
“Why?” He shakes his head. “How?”
“It’s like he said when he came to Hemlock Hollow, they think he was justified. Your dad made some
choices the Liberty Party didn’t support.”
“The West Hub.”
I nod.
“No way am I taking orders from my father’s killer,” he hisses. “The Outlands are not an option and everywhere else is on-grid.”
“Maybe you could get us new ID’s,” I say.
“And the facial and vocal recognition software would still catch us.” He frowns. “ I know it’s not ideal here, Lydia, but we are completely off-grid and you’re safe.”
“Yeah, when I’m not fighting off Pit.”
“We both know you could have fried him if things went too far.”
“Like a donut,” I agree.
“It’s better you didn’t. There’s still a huge reward offered for us. Most of the Red Dogs have their own reasons for avoiding the Greens, and most have been off-grid so long they couldn’t care less about who is wanted for what. Even if they recognized us, most would be too lazy or too scared to do anything about it. But no sense bringing attention to our abilities.”
“Korwin, there’s something I need to tell you,” I begin. “Something I’ve been worried about since Pit brought me here.”
“What?”
“I’ve been here before.”
He crinkles his brow at me.
“And last time, it didn’t end well.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Last year, when I left the manor through the sewer, a Red Dog named Hambone captured me. Another named Patchwork almost collared me. There were at least six men touching me when I sparked out. They all went down.”
He rubs his chin. “Patchwork and Hambone? Never heard of them. They might have moved on to another clan.”
I frown. I hope he’s right. I didn’t mean to hurt those men, just protect myself. It’s crossed my mind during the last year that I might have killed one or all of them when my power lashed out.
“Try not to worry about it, Lydia. Even if one of them saw you, they might not recognize you. Try not to be alone in public areas. If we run into one of them, we’ll… explain things to them.”
“What’s to explain?”
“Self-protecting scamping equipment.” He shrugs. “We’ll come up with something.”
“Okay.” I circle my fingers over my temples.
“What’s wrong?”
“Please, can we get some water? My head.”
He flashes a lopsided grin. “You’re hungover.”
I press my fingers against my temples. “It throbs, here.”
“Yeah, that’ll happen. Lucky for you, I have a cure.”
He hooks his arm in mine and leads me from the room. The hallways and stairwells are conspicuously empty. “Red Dogs are usually late risers. I’m surprised Pit and Bella were up.”
I shrug. “I don’t think he’d been to bed yet. He smelled like chemicals and acted drunk.”
“Probably smoking Slip.”
“What’s Slip?”
“It’s an acid that’s produced during the production of meat products. The meat makers coax a stem cell to become muscle in a vat of solution. The solution becomes acidic as the meat draws in certain minerals from the solution to grow and pumps out enzymes... byproducts of the manufacturing process. Slip is toxic to plants and animals, so NGA puts it into barrels and dumps it in the deadzone. The people here boil it down into a tar and smoke it to get high. It’s addictive and deadly.”
“If it’s addictive and deadly, why do they smoke it?”
“It’s free and causes an intense high. I’ve seen people go three days on the stuff without sleeping or eating. I’ve seen people die after taking it.”
“Hmm.”
“Everyone here has to earn their keep. Mutts’ lives are hard. Brutal sometimes. It’s a cheap escape.”
I nod, although I don’t truly understand why someone would risk his or her long-term health for a temporary high. I remember the chemical smell from my first run-in with the Red Dogs and form another theory of what happened to Hambone and Patchwork.
I’m relieved when we arrive at a door labeled kitchen and I can put thoughts of Slip and my prior escape from the Red Dogs behind me. The industrial-style galley is just around the corner from the laundry room.
“I call this recipe Old Reliable, and when I say old, I mean a couple of weeks, as that is the history of my drinking career,” Korwin says.
“Since you came here?”
“Since I left you.” From the back of a stainless steel cupboard, he slides out a pitcher with a blade at the bottom attached to a base with a plug.
“What is that?” I ask.
“A blender.”
“I thought there was no electricity?”
“Oh, we have units here. They’re just highly rationed. Anyway, I don’t plan to use any.”
Near the back, he opens a pantry and retrieves a few jars and boxes. “Bananas,” he says, holding up a jar of yellow fruit slices. He opens the lid and dumps the contents in the blender. “Eggs.” A box this time, full of powder.
“Those are not eggs,” I say.
“As close as we come here.” Rotating his hand over the stash, he selects a plastic bottle. “OJ.” The entire bottle glugs into the mix. “And the secret ingredient.” He plucks another box from the stack and adds a heaping scoop of black granules.
“What is that?”
“Instant coffee.”
“Eww. Sounds hideous.”
“Watch for nosey mutts,” he says, pointing toward the door. I cross the room and look left and right down the hall. “It’s clear.”
Hand wrapped around the prongs at the end of the cord, Korwin concentrates until the blade at the bottom of the device spins with a low hum. In less than a minute, the ingredients are blended into a frothy orangish beverage. He releases the cord. The blades stop. A gesture of his chin has me checking the hall once more.
“Clear,” I say.
“Good.” He retrieves a set of glasses from the cupboard and fills one, then the other, before washing out the blender in the giant sink. “Go ahead. I need to clean this up before anyone asks questions.”
I take a tentative sip. “It’s not bad.”
He scrubs and rinses the pitcher. “Give it a chance on that headache. You’ll come to appreciate it beyond the taste.”
The throb between my temples has me tipping the glass once again. “Why isn’t anyone up?”
“Most of the kennel sleeps well past ten. Red Dogs are thieves, and thieves’ comfort comes with darkness. Plus, breakfast is a dish rarely served. They eat hot meals twice a day, although some might have a package of this or that in their room between times.”
The last of the shake empties into my mouth, and I feel some relief. Korwin finishes drying the appliance and tucks it away again at the back of the cabinet.
“About last night,” I begin. “I’m sorry I was inappropriate.”
He frowns. “Not inappropriate, just premature. I know where you come from, Lydia. I know who you are. I refuse to be the source of your regret.”
“Thank you. It’s getting harder,” I say, placing a hand on my cheek. “My self-control is waning. If we don’t return to Hemlock Hollow, how will we ever be married?”
“The collar around your neck is the closest thing Red Dogs get to marriage,” he says. “We might be able to find someone on the outside. With the right motivation, we could get it done, I think. Not an Amish wedding but a Christian one.”
The idea of not being married the Amish way breaks my heart. I try to distract myself with focus on the practical. “What do you mean by motivation? Like units?”
He nods. “I’ve been saving up from my fights. If I win Friday night, my cut in the units will make anything possible.”
“You fight the Knights’ contender Friday.” I purse my lips.
“You don’t approve?”
“Proverbs 13 says the unfaithful have an appetite for violence.”
“Yeah? Well, I have an appetite for keeping my head on my shoulders. It�
��s not as though I have a choice here.”
“No, I suppose not.”
Korwin tips his glass and swallows the rest of his shake. “Here. Hand me your glass. I’ll do the dishes.”
“Let me,” I say. I take the glass and turn on the water. “Can I ask you something?”
“I don’t know. If you have to ask permission, it must be something I don’t want to answer.”
I roll my eyes. “How do you keep winning?”
“You mean, do I use the spark?” he whispers.
I nod.
“No, I don’t. They’d assume I was scamping power from the pack and rip me apart.”
“Great.”
“But fists… fists you can use. And thankfully, I have a lifetime of training to put to use here.”
“Not to mention the genetic advantages that come with being a Spark.”
“As long as it doesn’t make me glow, I use it. I’m faster and stronger.”
“But not invincible.”
“No. When I’m hit, I hurt. When I’m cut, I bleed.”
“This opponent worries you. I could tell last night.”
He rubs a hand over his mouth. “I don’t know this guy. He’s new. I’ve never seen him fight, but if the Knights are willing to bet five thousand units on the man, he’s got to be good.”
My stomach twists. “The thought of someone hurting you makes me sick.”
“You and me both. Just do me a favor and stay away from Pit and the rest of the mutts, all right? I need to save it for the ring.”
I finish with the glasses and put them away. “I can protect myself.”
“I’m serious, Lydia. It’s best if you don’t use the spark.”
“I’m not talking about the spark. The Nanomem worked. I have all of David’s training here, in my head.” I tap my temple. “I took down a Green Republic officer on my way here yesterday.”
He freezes. “Did the Greens see? Do they know who you are?”
“I was wearing a motorcycle helmet. They saw someone, but they don’t know it’s me. Pit saved me from being arrested. That’s why I didn’t end him in the laundry room. I felt a certain obligation.”
“Shit, Lydia.” He stares at me in awe for a moment, then breaks a smile. “You drove a motorcycle?”