by Dia Reeves
“Neither me nor the milk is on the menu. Tell your friends.”
The sweetbite nodded and flew away, miserably.
“And they lived happily ever after,” Rue continued. “The end. Isn’t that nice, Cindy and Mindy? And such a good lesson. Never pretend to be something you’re not, or you will get hacked to death with an axe.”
After brushing on the last of the milk, Rue smelled a predator.
The sticky, silken cords that grew from the top of the cocoons made them easy to secure high in the tortured mesquite. When Rue dropped to the ground, the roses had ensnared two feral hogs by the throat and was draining their porcine blood.
“Good work!” Rue said as new roses bloomed along the canes and fresh blood scented the air. Blood…
And Heath.
She sped off, chasing that scent in her nose. All the way to El Camino Real, down a slight embankment, slipped on a pile of leaf litter, and fell into his arms.
Heath, stylish in his dark coat and boots.
A sleek red car, like a poisoned apple, waited by the side of the road, impatiently chuffing. The name on the vanity plate: Chlöe (with a heart instead of an O). Heath had never been able to resist what he called signs. Heath believed in fate and the gods, and often chose victims based on the roll of dice or the number of grackles lining a powerline. He had mated Rue exactly thirteen times and no more. Fourteen would have broken the stars, he’d told her. He was full of shit, but Rue found his brand of shit entertaining.
Heath had chopped most of his hair off since she’d last seen him and dyed what was left purple to match his limbal rings, which blazed as he looked her over. He had woven the fibers of the heart of his first kill into a bracelet he always wore on his left wrist. She caught a glimpse of it when he grabbed her coat and kissed her. Rue pulled away quickly. It had been so long since she’d communicated with her own kind, and she needed to see to do that; it was hard to kiss and see at the same time.
What’re you doing way up here?
That human in the car is teaching me to drive. Mostly down alleys so I won’t kill anyone.
Except her?
Heath laughed. I’m glad your sense of irony is still intact. But no. After the way she’s helped me, it would be cruel. He said the word “cruel” aloud. There was no word for it in their language.
I smelled you three streets down that way and came racing over. You look so good; much less moody than normal. Human life agrees with you.
You too. You’ve never worried about cruelty before.
I’m going through a phase. He grinned. At least that’s what my family keeps telling me.
Typical. You get indulged and pampered through your ‘phase’, and I get kicked out of the family.
You left, Heath was quick to remind her. You chose. I admire that; my whole family does—in private. Don’t worry about Nettle. She’ll fit with us. I’ll make sure of it.
That’s sweet, but Nettle’s already moved on. She’ll keep running, you know. First to Houston. Then maybe Galveston. She’ll like the ocean. I know I did.
Heath’s eyes jittered in confusion. What are you talking about? Nettle’s at our house, finalizing the arrangement. She agreed to join with Dodder.
The words circled unwanted in Rue’s head, so unwanted, her body tried to envelop and devour them, like germs. Tried and failed.
She said she didn’t want to. She said she’d hide out in Houston. She said she’d come to me.
Had Nettle said that?
It was an option, Rue said, yelling at her own doubts. Why wouldn’t she come to me? She checked her phone.
Messages? Explanations? Apologies?
Nothing.
Nettle had chosen Dodder over her.
“Rue, look at me.” Aloud to get her attention. Heath’s rings had gone red with worry.
I have to talk to her. In person. No more of this phone shit. I want her to look at me and tell me to my face that she’d be happy throwing her life away.
The decision was made, Rue. You made it.
Stop throwing that in my face! They can’t ruin Nettle’s life before she even gets to have one just to prove a point to me. I should have taken her when I left.
She didn’t want to come. She chose not to follow you.
Because she’s shy. The unknown frightens her. She’ll adapt. We did.
You did.
Distancing himself from her.
I’m going back. I’ll drag her out of there by her hair if I have to.
You can’t.
I can do whatever the hell I want.
At least let me go first, Heath pleaded. Maybe I can smooth the way for you, tell her you want to meet her somewhere before the joining ceremony. Somewhere private. If you don’t make it a public thing, maybe this could still end well.
The red car honked, an impatient sound.
Give me an hour. Even less than that. I was going back to give her a new phone anyway. I’ll have Nettle call you and arrange a meeting. Okay? I’m serious, Rue. Don’t do anything stupid.
Rue gave him her phone number.
I’ll wait. But if I don’t hear from Nettle in an hour, I’m going back. And this time, I’m not leaving without her. Will you tell her that?
I will. He nipped Rue on the ear and after one last, worried look, hurried back to the red car and peeled away.
She rubbed where he’d bitten her. Tried to rub the sensation of his teeth on her completely away.
You chose.
As wild as Heath was, cutting his hair before joining, running the streets with humans, even he thought she’d crossed a line. It was a game to him; he didn’t get it. None of them did. Not even Nettle.
“Who was that?” the twins asked, startling her.
They stood among the pines just above her, a trap fashioned of nearly invisible cord, leaves and twigs between them. A big trap for a big predator.
“What’s that for?”
“Backstabber. Who was that guy?”
“Heath.” Rue brushed past them and stopped, trying to orient herself. Where the hell was she going? She had to wait. She had to think. She had to get away from that stink. “What is that?”
“Backstabber urine. To lure them.”
“Why do you need a backstabber?”
“Eyes. Backstabber eyes are what we need. Why were you staring at him like that?” asked Sterling. “All quiet and intense.”
“We were talking.”
“How? Telepathically? You didn’t say one word to him.”
“I said plenty. With my eyes. That’s how we communicate.”
Sterling turned her to face them. “Communicate with us.”
She tried, but their dark eyes were dead lumps of coal. “Ouch!”
A sweetbite had attached itself to her arm, pretty mouth red with Rue’s blood, licking its lips. Her internal bug repellent clearly was no longer working.
Maybe she was out of control internally, but externally, Rue still called the shots.
She squashed the sweetbite, flicked it to the ground, spat on it. “I said tell your friends!”
“Nice people don’t spit, Rue.”
“Who said I was nice?”
Rue took a deep breath and arranged her face into her best calm expression. But she didn’t feel calm until, first, she buried the stupid sweetbite beneath a barren mulberry bush and, second, hurried back down to El Camino Real. She couldn’t travel the road yet. Not yet. But being on the road and ready to go steadied her breathing.
“Who was that guy?” Sterling asked again. He and Stanton had followed her out of the woods.
“I told you.”
“‘Heath’ doesn’t tell us anything.” He grabbed her arm and held her still. “What is he to you?”
“A boyfriend. An old one.”
“Any newer ones we should know about?”
She jerked her arm away, nerves jangling again. “Are you mad at me too? First Nettle, now you? Why does everyone hate me?”
Sterling
said, “I don’t hate you.”
“Then why are you yelling?”
“Ignore him, Rue. He gets territorial.” Stanton stepped between them. “Why do you think Nettle hates you? Did that guy say so?”
“Heath said she chose someone else over me. Why would she, unless she was mad? I have to go home.”
“Fine,” Sterling said. “We’re tired of getting bitten anyway.”
“Not the plantation. My home. It’s the only way I can find out where I went wrong with my sister. I promised to wait for her to call, but if she says something stupid, I’m going to go get her.”
The twins did their own silent communicating.
“To bring her home with us?” Sterling said. “That’s a good idea.”
“But I—”
“We’ll talk to Dad about it,” said Stanton.
“In exchange for what? Backstabber eyes?”
Before the twins could answer, her phone rang. Chlöe Norris? Heath’s human’s car had been named Chlöe.
“Heath?”
“He give me your message,” Nettle yelled, “and guess who is listening and overhears everything? Dodder! He tell everyone—everyone!—you are going to stop the joining.”
“You bet I am,” Rue said. “That’s exactly the plan. And speaking of plans, what the hell happened to Houston? What the hell happened to us? The ball, Europe. The second you join with that blabbermouth creep, it’s all over.”
“You know what you did? Do you even know? What they say they will do? You speak to me of plans, but they are making plans for you. Plans. Do you understand? Stay out of it, Rue.”
“Out of what? Your life?”
“Yes! Before you ruin everything!”
Chapter 9
The next morning, Rue lay in bed, no sound but the shuffle of servants out in the corridor. She should have been shuffling with them, should have been out patrolling hours ago.
She pulled the covers over her head and, in the darkness, watched the minutes tick by on her phone.
It rang.
Chlöe Norris. Again.
Rue listened to “If I Only Had a Heart” for the millionth time that morning, wishing she could control what ringtone Nettle got to hear as she waited in vain for Rue to answer. Was there a song called “You Told Me to Butt Out, Remember? So Suck It.” A song like that would have been useful.
The phone went dark and silent. Stayed silent.
Rue had just decided to get up and start the day, since the morning’s entertainment seemed to have ended, when there was a tap at her door.
A servant entered. Some man Rue didn’t know. “A Nettle on the phone for you, Miss. Says it’s urgent.”
He gave Rue the cordless phone and left, and Rue almost couldn’t be angry. No one had ever tried this hard to reach her.
“You’d better be calling to apologize.”
“Leave the house. Right now.”
The panic in Nettle’s voice propelled Rue from the warm cocoon of her bed. She shot across the chilly floor and yanked her coat on over her nightgown. “What happened?”
“What does this matter? They come for you. They come right now.”
She was about to shove her foot into her shoe, but paused. “Mom and Dad?”
“No, you idiot! The Mortmaine.”
Rue burst from the room and was barreling down the stairs when Frida opened the front door.
“Frida, don’t!”
But it was too late.
The Mortmaine gathered in a line in the foyer, three of them, shoulder to shoulder. Rue shivered in the cold blasting through the open door. Shivered as their eyes fastened on her.
They were just kids, barely older than Rue. Initiates who weren’t skilled enough to wear head to toe green, only splashes: a scarf here, a pair of boots there, and the one in the middle wore a green hat that was almost comically elfish.
They had no guns, not that Rue could see. The one with the scarf had a stick that occasionally sizzled with electric blue sparks. The booted one held a bat with the word Honeyside branded along its length. The one in the middle, the one with the elf hat, held two short-handled axes.
“Listen,” Rue began, but Ax interrupted her.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” he said. “Sheathe your claws and let’s make this as painless as possible.”
Rue hadn’t even realized her claws were out. She retracted them as Frida closed the front door and nervously asked:
“Want me to get the mister?”
“It’s fine.” Rue walked the rest of the way down the stairs. She hated that they’d seen her running, seen her panic. It gave them an advantage—she wouldn’t give them any more. “We’re civilized people here. So let’s talk about this. Make what as painless as possible?”
“Your journey to Nightshade.”
Rue gave them her most charming smile. “Am I being recruited?”
The smile Ax offered in return was less than charming. “We don’t recruit beasts. Your people disowned you. That makes you fair game. We’ve been ordered to take you to Nightshade for study.”
“Study?” Rue was no longer smiling. “If you mean torture, why don’t you just say so?”
“My apologies. We will study you after you have been vivisected and catalogued. Is that the level of clarity you needed?”
Rue considered making a run past the initiates and their weapons…and stumbling into whatever backup they had waiting outside. Instead she ran down the back hallway, into the ballroom, toward the french doors that opened onto the backyard. But just as she grabbed the gold door handle, she was stopped short by a rope around her neck and jerked backward.
Rue swiveled, grabbed the rope, yanked it, and the Honeyside bat girl holding the other end crashed into her. More specifically, Honeyside’s nose crashed into Rue’s forehead. Honeyside hit the floor, holding her nose, and Rue had just managed to unknot the rope from her neck and catch a quick breath when Electric Stick zapped her in the back.
Rue absorbed as much electricity as her body would hold and then released a burst of it from each hand, one into Electric Stick and one into Ax, who stood next to her. After a prolonged, juddering second, they joined Honeyside on the ballroom floor.
“Come on!” Frida stood in the doorway, jingling a pair of car keys.
Rue followed her back into the hall.
“Do they not have back up waiting out front?”
“I didn’t see anyone. Can you drive?”
“I was hoping you could.”
“I can and I will. The nerve of them, treating you like that! I sent Claudia to track down the mister. I sure hope he’s in the world today. He always knows just what to do. In the meantime, we can find you a hole to disappear into, at least until—”
An ax sliced through the air between Rue and Frida’s heads and thudded to a stop in the front door.
The initiates stood behind them, one with blood dripping down her face, the other two with their electrically-styled hair teased out like members of an eighties rock band.
“Leave her alone, you bullies!” Frida said, which would have been more impressive had she not been hiding behind Rue. “You can’t take her away like she’s a rabid dog. She’s our lethiferist. She’s kind and gentle. Even with the things she kills. Or doesn’t kill. She let a couple of giant bugs go free once. I saw her. If she can have mercy on a bug, can’t you have mercy on her?”
Ax grabbed the much taller Frida by the hair, pulled her forward, shoved her to the right.
Frida vanished.
Through a door, Rue assumed. One of the dreaded invisible ones people stumbled into from time to time. Or were shoved through.
The Mortmaine used such doors as weapons.
“Finding holes to disappear into is our specialty,” Ax said, aiming his remaining one at Rue’s head. “Come with us now, or I’ll find one for you too.”
Rue swiped at him, and a second later the hand and the ax it held clattered to the floor. Before she could reverse and swing her c
laws toward Ax’s neck, a slap across the face took Rue down. Hard.
Honeyside had slapped her, and not with the bat. Just her hand; Rue lay on the floor, paralyzed.
By a slap?
Her body could overcome paralysis. In time. Time, she was sure, the Mortmaine wouldn’t give her.
Honeyside kicked Rue over onto her back and grabbed her legs.
Had they somehow drugged her? If so, her body should have fought it off. Her heart was still strong enough, pounding as it was.
Westwood appeared on the stairs as the initiates dragged Rue to the front door. He paused midway down the stairs. “Is there a problem?”
Electric Stick said, “Yeah, and we solved it. You’re welcome.”
“Her clan has forsaken her for the good of their community,” Honeyside added. “They’ve offered her to us for study.”
“They offered her in error.”
“She’s on the list,” said Ax sternly, but his expression remained half alive with pain and shock. He had bound his own limb and shoved his severed hand into his back pocket, the fingers poking out like a curious pet.
Westwood said, “Go back to Nightshade and get a new list.”
“We don’t answer to you.”
“You answer to the Mayor, who wouldn’t like to see me upset. And neither would you. I’ve claimed Just Rue, and anyone who wants to dispute it is welcome to discuss the matter with me personally.”
A look passed among the initiates and without speaking, Honeyside dropped Rue’s legs and Electric stick retrieved Ax’s weapons from the door and floor.
Ax pointed his stump at Westwood. “My elder will hear about this. About your phony claims of ownership…and about the unusual number of doors on your land. In your house. Freaky unusual. Will that upset the Mayor?”
The three initiates stepped over Rue and left the house.
Westwood squatted beside her. “Where are you hurt?”
“I can’t feel anything.”
He angled Rue’s face to the side and after a sharp ripping sound, her body regained control of her nervous system.
Westwood was only able to examine the rectangular bit of purple paper he’d removed from her cheek a few seconds before it disintegrated. “Very tricky, the Mortmaine.”