by Laura Legend
“That’s fine,” Zach said. “I’d probably better save the other half of my day for tomorrow, too.”
Cass had been fading, but this remark caught her attention. Zach and Richard had been late for her fight. Where had they been?
Cass lifted her head to get a look at Zach. “Where were you guys this morning? Even moments before the fight began, Richard’s box was empty and you guys were nowhere to be seen.”
“Umm—” Zach started.
“Are you stepping out on me?” Cass teased, arching her eyebrow. “With Richard?”
Zach stiffened a little at the suggestion, but then played along.
“No,” he said, “I definitely prefer manic pixie dream girls to undead British dudes.”
In the silence that followed, though, Cass could tell that her joke about Richard had touched a nerve.
Cass waited. When Zach didn’t say anything, she added, “What?”
“I see the way he looks at you, Cass,” Zach confessed. “Not just like he’s attracted to you, but like he needs you. Like he’s hungry for you. Like you may be his last, best hope for—redemption? Anybody within a hundred feet can feel the electricity between the two of you.”
Cass nodded solemnly and slipped her hand under Zach’s T-shirt.
“Zach,” Cass said darkly, “I’m afraid I need to tell you something important.”
Zach looked a little worried and braced himself—then Cass pinched and twisted his nipple, hard. He jumped and yelled “Ouch.”
Cass let loose with a long, deep laugh.
“Good Lord,” Zach said, relieved, as he tucked her back inside her blanket and squeezed her tight, “I love the sound of your laugh.”
Cass settled into his arms, closing her eyes.
“You are the one I’m in bed with,” Cass said. “I chose you. And of the two of you, you’re the only one who’s ever had their nipple pinched by me.”
“Umm, thanks.”
“And, if you ever forget,” Cass continued, her voice starting to trail off, “I’m prepared to remind you of my affection as often as is necessary.”
Zach rubbed his sore nipple.
“That won’t be necessary. I think this reminder is going to be tender for a long time.”
Cass, though, didn’t respond. She was already asleep.
When Cass woke two hours later, she sat bolt upright. One moment she was asleep, and the next she was wide awake.
The room was dark and Zach was still dressed, lying on the bed next to her. She shook her head, trying to clear her mind of the image of the kabuki mask, then slipped out of bed. She looked back at Zach. He looked so cute when he was asleep. So innocent. She tucked him in with her blanket, then quietly closed the door behind her.
She wasn’t going to get back to sleep anytime soon.
In fact, her body felt saturated with that same restless power, itching just beneath her skin, that she’d felt last night. The heat of it rolled off her. Her cheeks were flushed and her hands trembled.
Push-ups weren’t going to cut it tonight.
She grabbed a pair of running shorts and her running shoes, took the elevator downstairs, and stepped out onto the street. She might be wrong, but the twilight sky seemed more purple than gray at the moment, perhaps tinged with an angry red.
She didn’t stretch. She was ready to go, already bouncing from one foot to the other, so she just took off running. She didn’t worry much about where she was going. The streets, as usual, weren’t empty this time of night, but they had thinned out. She knew that somewhere on the other side of the arena there was a kind of public park, and headed vaguely in that direction, hoping she’d find even fewer people there.
She was flying along. She must’ve already been running a six-minute mile and hadn’t broken a sweat. She hadn’t done anything yet to scratch the itch that sent her out there, so she began to push her pace. The streets were flying by, intersection after intersection. She was barely through one before she was crossing the next. A little of the raw energy pulsing through her began to bleed off.
Only ten minutes into her run, though, she noticed that a pair of motorcycles had been tagging along for more than a few blocks. The rocket bikes were manned by two fellows in black leather and full helmets with reflective visors. Subtle. She felt a little silly and paranoid—really, who would bother to follow her?—but then pushed those thoughts aside. She wasn’t imagining this. She had already been tailed and threatened once in the past few days.
Watching out of the corner of her eye, she took an unexpected turn to see if they would follow. They did. She took another, turning back in the direction she’d come. They did, too.
They weren’t just out for a ride.
What a bunch of punks. Can’t a girl just do a little midnight speed work without being harassed?
Cass had had enough. It was time to lose these assholes.
She started to push herself. How fast could she go? Her feet were barely skimming the concrete. She wiped a single bead of sweat from her forehead. She was below a four-minute mile now. Harder. Faster. A three-minute mile. She started to put some distance between herself and the bikes. A two-minute mile. But when the bikers realized they’d been made and Cass was trying to lose them, they also kicked it into high gear.
Cass cut loose. She was running ridiculously fast, faster than she’d ever run. She wasn’t even sure how to gauge how fast she was going anymore. It felt good, though. It felt really good. Her head felt clearer. Her heart pounded in her ears. Her itch was getting scratched. The motorcycles roared, trying to keep pace while navigating the tight corners.
Cass started to look for ways to use the terrain to her advantage—running off the corners of walls, vaulting off fire escapes, and hopping alley fences. She would, at intervals, lose the bikes for a minute or two but, somehow, they always zeroed back in on her. And now they were getting closer.
Cass was about to give up on the idea of losing them and just head back to the apartment where she would at least have reinforcements when, as she cut through an alley, a cat-sized shadow darted out in front of her and stopped. Cass, too, came to a screeching halt. She and the orange tabby cat stared at each other.
It was her own damn cat, Atlantis—always lost, always turning up in the weirdest places.
Meow, he said.
“Hey,” Cass said, breathing heavy with her hands on her knees. “You’ve got an idea?”
Without answering, the cat turned and dashed down the alley.
“Okay, then. Lead the way.”
Cass took off after the cat. Atlantis led her along an even wilder route than she’d already manufactured for herself, using every handhold and free surface at her disposal to keep up with the cat. The motorcycles couldn’t keep up, but Cass could still hear their engines revving through the streets not too far in the distance.
When she catapulted over the next fence, Cass found that she was in a service alley behind the arena itself. The alley was dominated by loading bays for delivery trucks. She paused, uncertain where Atlantis had gone. A motorcycle headlamp appeared at one end of the alleyway. A second headlamp appeared at the opposite end. They had her boxed in.
Meow.
There. Atlantis was on the loading dock. As Cass watched, he slipped under a cracked bay door.
The bikes revved their engines. Cass sprinted for the bay, leapt onto the dock, slid toward the door, and squeezed underneath.
The lights inside were on, but no one was home. There was no sign of Atlantis either.
Typical, Cass thought, as she closed and locked the bay door, then made her way toward the interior. Cass poked her head into the service hallway. It was empty.
She was about to let out a deep breath and relax when she froze in place.
A familiar voice echoed down the hall.
21
Cass knew that voice.
She’d only met the man twice, but his distinctive Moroccan accent was hard to forget. The voice belonged to Amare, the
man who, in exchange for the chains of St. Paul, had given them information about Miranda’s location when she’d been abducted by the Shield.
It floated down the corridor from a nearby room, presumably. There were two other voices with him, but both were muffled and indistinct.
What was he doing here? Who was he talking to?
Hugging the wall and keeping an eye out for Atlantis, Cass inched down the hallway toward the voices. The door to a maintenance room was ajar. Pressed flat against the cool cinderblock wall, Cass could see through the crack. There were three people in the room. Amare, voice raised and hands gesturing, was heatedly arguing a point. Cass shifted her angle and almost jumped backward when the second figure came into view: the woman in the kabuki mask. The woman was shaking her head and staring hard at the concrete floor.
“I’m not sure we can wait a few more days,” Amare said, his voice hard. “The situation back at the casino is growing desperate. More and more of our brothers and sisters are going feral. It’s contagious. And once it reaches a tipping point, the whole population will go under. We need that relic—now.”
A third voice, still muffled at first, responded. Cass shifted her perspective again and brought a third, hooded figure into view. Then the sound of the voice grew stronger and clearer and, once it registered, the voice rooted Cass to the spot. The violently familiar voice of the hooded figure gripped her by the brain stem.
It was the Heretic.
“Shit,” Cass whispered to herself, recoiling from the crack in the door.
“Do what you can, Amare,” the Heretic said. “We will secure the tournament prize”—she paused and looked pointedly at the demon, who nodded—"and that will buy us the time we need to finally begin redeeming the Lost on any kind of scale. We succeeded with you. We will succeed again.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Amare resolved, his voice betraying both affection and reverence.
What the hell were they talking about? Cass wondered. They’re going to start “redeeming” vampires on a large scale? What does that even mean?
Cass closed her eyes and leaned her head against the cool wall. Her mind was spinning. She felt, despite herself, some sympathy for them. And, as a result, what she thought she knew about the world felt loose and unstable. Instead of being neatly black and white, her world was threatening to shift into competing shades of gray.
Could the Lost be saved?
Then Cass remembered what had happened to Miranda, and she was swamped by a tide of guilt and anger. No. The Heretic had taken Miranda. The Heretic had stolen Miranda’s life from her. And though some undead facsimile of Miranda might still walk the earth, Miranda was gone. Cass had seen the transformation with her own eyes. She’d never forget those sharp, glinting teeth.
Miranda was dead.
And the Heretic would pay.
Cass could hear someone else coming down the hall, rubber soles slapping and cart wheels creaking.
A janitor?
Cass would have her revenge, but three-to-one odds with an innocent janitor in the mix didn’t make this the right time.
Cass gauged how long she had until the janitor turned the corner and how long it would take her to clear the next one. Too long. Cass glanced up at the hallway’s high ceiling of exposed pipes.
There.
With two running steps Cass crossed the hall, planted her foot midway up the wall, and silently launched herself upward in the opposite direction. Surprised again by her own strength, she almost overshot the pipe she was aiming to grab, but hung on and swung her legs up, wrapping them around the same length of tubing. In the shadows above the hanging lights, she was practically invisible. Unless someone was looking for her, they wouldn’t see her.
The janitor turned the corner and pushed his cart down the hall, one loose wheel wobbling. As he passed under her, Cass drew in a breath, holding perfectly still. Holding her breath, though, meant that her phone now had room to slide free of her pocket and, with her eyes wide as saucers, she watched it tumble out, heading straight for the top of the janitor’s bald head.
Working purely from reflex, Cass let go of the pipes with her hands, allowing her legs to bear her full weight. She swung downward and snatched the phone out of the air, just grazing the top of the janitor’s head.
He looked around and reached up to scratch his head. Cass swung back up into the shadows. The janitor muttered to himself and continued on his way.
Staying where she was, Cass could hear the conversation in the other room wrapping up.
The raspy, masked voice of the demon guaranteed that she would win the tournament and the relic.
We’ll see about that, Cass thought, her almost forgotten anger roaring back to life.
Amare and the Heretic exited the room and disappeared down the hallway. The demon didn’t come out for another minute. She waited long enough that Cass started to wonder what she was doing in there. But just as Cass had decided to shimmy forward and sneak a look, the demon stepped out into the hall and stopped again, just beneath Cass. The demon waited and listened, looking around suspiciously, as if she suspected that she was not alone.
Cass pulled back deeper into the shadows and made sure she had a good grip on her phone.
The demon shook her head, as if trying to clear it of something she’d prefer not to remember, and left.
22
With Cass off prepping for today’s fight with Kumiko, Zach had the morning free to play detective again.
He and Richard had already exited the Underside and, on Richard’s instructions, a sleek motorcycle was waiting for them on the curb. Richard tossed Zach a helmet, then only pulled on a pair of sunglasses and riding gloves for himself. Apart from decapitation, the undead, evidently, weren’t concerned with head injuries.
Zach wouldn’t admit it if anyone asked him, but he’d enjoyed playing bad cop to Richard’s rich cop yesterday. They’d made a good a team and he had felt like he was actually doing something useful. Just sitting around the apartment waiting for Cass to win the tournament was torture. Richard might be stiff and cold and British, but he had a backbone and he was serious about helping Cass. Zach didn’t need to like him—Cass could take care of that for both of them—but he was willing to help him.
“You know how to ride this thing?” Zach asked.
“Yes,” Richard said. “In fact, I built this bike from scratch. Hop on. We’ve got to check out the delivery address Jinn gave us before the trail gets cold.”
Richard straddled the bike and revved the throttle. The engine roared. Zach buckled his helmet, slapped down the visor, and swallowed hard.
“Okay,” Zach said. “Just remember that one of us is not already dead.”
As soon as Zach jumped on the back, Richard tore out of the alleyway, leaving a smoking patch of rubber. Zach had intended to just hang on to the back of the bike, but the speed at which they were weaving through Singapore’s chaotic streets convinced him to swallow his pride and hang on to Richard for dear life. As they banked into a corner, Zach squeezed him tight and, through his thin linen shirt, could feel every rib and rock-hard ab in Richard’s lean torso.
“You okay back there?” Richard yelled over his shoulder as they hit a straightaway.
“Fine,” Zach yelled back, blushing as he clung to Richard, glad for the helmet.
On the bike, free to weave through the traffic, they arrived at their destination in just twenty minutes. The address belonged to an apartment above a fish market. Richard coasted to a stop a block back and let the engine die. Zach got off first, his legs numb and unsteady from clenching the sides of the bike. Richard hopped off as if they’d just taken a relaxing stroll through the park.
Richard eyed Zach as he pulled off his helmet and, a little wobbly, leaned over with his hands on his knees.
“Perhaps a sidecar next time?” Richard asked.
Zach looked up and gave Richard the middle finger.
Richard chuckled, then pointed down the street. “This way.”
Even a block away, the smell of fish was almost overwhelming. The tables outside the store they were looking for were lined with crates filled with ice and fish. The table was manned by a fellow who looked like fish oil might be the secret to his slicked-back hair. Zach scanned the front of the building. The entrance leading to the apartment must be inside the store itself. He took the lead and entered the store. The man with the fish-oil hair gave them the evil eye, but didn’t say anything.
The stairs leading up to the second floor were to the right. The store itself consisted mostly of long butcher tables, stacked with bins of fish waiting to be gutted. Four guys with long, thin knives and bloody aprons were working at the tables. When Zach and Richard walked in, the men all froze and glared at the pair of them. The stench was strong. Zach pinched his nose shut and offered a friendly wave. Their eyes narrowed and nostrils flared.
Zach and Richard made for the stairs, but a fifth guy—also with a knife and bloody apron—descended from the stairway and blocked their path. Behind them, Zach heard the door swing shut, ringing its little bell.
“I see how it’s gonna be,” Zach said, raising his hands as if to indicate how harmless he was.
The five men blocked all the exits and surrounded the two of them, brandishing their knives. One of the men still had a fish in his hand. He held it up as an object lesson, slowly drew his knife down the length of it, and cleanly pulled the entrails free.
He smiled an evil smile as blood spattered the floor.
Zach shrugged, his eyes glinting green. “My dad used to take me fishing all the time.”
Zach wasn’t sure if the man spoke English, but he was sure that the man with the knife didn’t care for his attitude. The man threw the fish to the floor, yelled some Mandarin obscenity, and rushed at Zach, knife first.
Zach sidestepped the attack, stuck out his foot, and sent the falling man’s knife straight into the gut of a fellow fishmonger. Both men—both the stabbed and the stabber—looked at each other in disbelief. Then the stabbed man leaned forward, tipped over, and fell on the stabber, taking them both to the floor. Trapped beneath the weight of his friend’s corpse, the man struggled to extract himself from the mess. Richard gave that man a kick in the head and knocked him unconscious.