by Stacia Kane
Then he tightened his grip on her hand, stroked her rib cage as he sped up his movements just a little, and something crashed inside her. She crashed. She broke open above him, broke apart, and the world around her broke, too, so only Terrible was left. Terrible, who she trusted. Terrible, who she loved, who loved her.
Who kept doing it, pushing her over the edge again, and then again, until finally he changed his grip and straightened up, still holding her thighs so he could drive himself back into her with a force that sent a scream flying from her mouth. “Gimme it again,” he said, leaning over as he knelt on the floor in front of her, his eyes so close to hers they blocked everything else. “No more with him. No more. Not ever.”
The words wouldn’t form. Not because she didn’t want them to but because she couldn’t breathe. For a second she stared at him, her mouth moving without sound, before her voice finally came to her rescue. “No. No more.”
His mouth on her neck, his arms under her thighs almost folding her in half while his hands gripped her rib cage to hold her in place, and he started moving again, still angry, still rough. Her eyes had adjusted enough for her to see his face, the way the light from under the door caught his jaw and chin when his head fell back, the way it caught the muscles in his bare arms as he squeezed her tighter, grabbed her shoulders to pull her down to meet his thrusts. It showed her his expression when he looked down at her, his emotions naked on his face, in his eyes.
Her heart couldn’t take it. Her oversensitive flesh couldn’t take it; it exploded, and somewhere in the distance she felt his head on her chest as he shuddered above her, his breath coming in hot, loud gasps until they both stopped shaking.
He eased himself away from her, his head down. For a few seconds, silence reigned, broken only by the sounds of his zipper and belt buckle. She had no idea what to say as she rearranged her skirt—where the hell had her panties gone, anyway? She’d have to find them—and apparently neither did he, because he kept his face turned away while he lit cigarettes for them both and handed her one.
A few drags later, he finally spoke. “Ain’t gonna give you a sorry.”
Great. That was an opening. Except it totally wasn’t. “I— You don’t have to. I do. I mean, I’m sorry. I didn’t think—I’m sorry.”
“Just ain’t can fuckin stand it no more. Gave it the try, true thing, but—can’t.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” She let her fingers brush his arm, a quick touch she wasn’t brave enough to extend. “But it’s not— It wasn’t because I don’t think you can beat him. I know you can. I know it. He just pissed me off so much, I didn’t think. I’m sorry.”
His head dipped, his profile outlined in pale gold. A quick nod, one that to anyone else might have looked like not much at all, but she knew better. The nod was the end of it. Relief washed over her, so strong and sharp she was certain that she’d have fallen if she’d been standing.
Relief and a fresh flood of shame, exactly the way she’d felt at Elder Griffin’s house. She’d gotten away with it.
It made her sick.
But to tell him wouldn’t mean she felt better; it would only hurt him all over again, destroy everything he’d tried to do, ruin the real Truth she’d given him. So she swallowed it, and—what the hell—grabbed the packet of speed from her pillbox and did a couple of quick bumps to make sure it stayed down where it belonged.
Down where his comments about Lex bringing her drugs, about the OD, down where the fact that he’d started to say something about her not giving up her apartment, would go, too, at least until she knew a good time to bring them up—if there ever was one. The OD, yeah, she’d been expecting that one, understood that one. But she hadn’t thought— Well, why would he care about Lex bringing her drugs? It wasn’t as if he wanted to do it or she wanted him to. And, yeah, it would be great if they didn’t each have stuff scattered all over both apartments, but they still spent just about every night together, they still saw each other just about every day, so what difference did it make?
And she’d told him why she couldn’t; she’d told him it was against the rules. Did he think she’d lied about that, or …
Or did he think if she really wanted to she would have done it no matter what.
She hoped to fuck he was wrong about that.
Somehow she suspected he wasn’t, not entirely. But what was— Everything was changing so fast, and how could she keep up with it? What else would have to change, if Lex wasn’t supplying her anymore, if she was never alone, watched all the time … Fuck.
She cleared her numbed-out throat, grabbed her water bottle from her bag, and took a drink. More important things to think about, to discuss, than her emotional weirdness and panic. She’d think about all of that later. “So … were there more tonight? Any—”
The words ended up buried in his chest; he’d grabbed her and yanked her to him, his arms hard around her shoulders, his hand on the back of her head holding her tight and his breath stirring her hair. “Sorry. Sorry, Chessie, aye? Shit, ain’t meant to— Sorry.”
“I love you.” Her throat felt too tight as she spoke. Destroying him, destroying them both … please let her be able to stop doing it. “I do, fuck, I love you so much, Terrible.”
Another minute, maybe, and he pulled away from her, looking around behind them to the closed door with his hand braced on the back of his neck.
When he turned back to her, his voice was steady. “Aye. More of em this night. More’n ten I had sight of, an heard on more, all of them got locked up another house of Bump’s. Hearin on more dead, too, more ripped-up bodies. Ain’t good, aye.”
“Fuck. No, that isn’t—”
Screams cut into her sentence, sliced it neatly apart so the rest of it stayed caught in her throat. That didn’t sound— Shit, was that coming from outside? There were so many of them, what was— Fuck. “Edsel.”
Terrible’s brows drew together. “Edsel?”
“Shit, he wanted to talk to you, he said he had knowledge for you. He seemed really nervous. I told him I’d bring you to him when I saw you.”
Terrible started running. The screaming hadn’t stopped. Fuck fuck fuck. That wasn’t good, wasn’t the sort of scream that became part of the general street noise in Downside: fights, cackles, screams just for the hell of it, which rang out at all hours of the day and night so she didn’t even notice them if she wasn’t paying attention.
Please let it not be Edsel. They burst out of the front door of Bump’s place and into the Market, where the screams were louder. And more numerous. Her feet hit the ground in a rhythm, running after Terrible, every slap of sole against cement a jarring reminder of her own forgetfulness. Please, please, because if something had happened to Edsel it was her fault; she was supposed to bring Terrible to him, that would have kept him safe, what the fuck was wrong with her? She’d even wondered at his booth if he’d been asking around and been overheard. Someone could have overheard him telling her he knew something.
But she’d forgotten. She’d forgotten because she’d been so busy thinking of her own fucking feelings. As if she fucking mattered.
People scattered as Terrible plowed down the aisle of the Market and pushed through the crowd gathered around Edsel’s booth. It was Edsel’s booth. Oh no, oh fuck no—
Terrible emerged from the shadows a second later, his gaze scanning the crowd for a second until it fell on her, pausing before moving on. His lips moved—she had some vague idea of what was being said, that he’d found some people to pack up Edsel’s stuff. She could barely hear it over the loud tinny ringing noise in her ears that had replaced the screams.
What she couldn’t do was look down, look below Terrible’s face. She couldn’t. Couldn’t see what he carried, didn’t want to see that fall of white-blond hair over his arm, that pale motionless face turned to the sky beneath its mask of horrible blood.
Terrible met her eyes again. Right. Follow him. He rushed toward the Chevelle—so she assumed, she hadn’t seen wh
ere he parked—and she sped after him, trying to stay close enough that his nearness would comfort her but not so close that she had to see Edsel’s silent body in his arms.
“Still breathin, Chessie,” Terrible said, as soon as they’d pulled away from the crowd far enough for her to hear him. “Ain’t dead, aye? Still breathin.”
She really, really wanted that to make her feel better, but it didn’t. Not when it was clear in his voice and his eyes, clear from the way Edsel didn’t regain consciousness, that the “ain’t dead” part could change any second.
She didn’t find her voice until they were in the Chevelle, racing onto the highway toward the nearest hospital, in Cross Town. If it was her voice; it sounded like someone else, someone panicked and sick and guilty, so fucking guilty. “This is my fault. It’s my fault, I told him I’d send you to— Fuck!”
“What?”
More speed, that was what. She’d taken … shit, she’d taken four Cepts before she went to Lex’s, right, then two more before she got to the Market? The last two had barely been an hour ago. Damn it, she couldn’t have any more. Shouldn’t have any more.
But she had speed—she probably shouldn’t take too much of it, either, but she could have some.
Two more bumps, bigger ones, and she could keep talking. Two more bumps and Terrible’s hand holding hers on his warm thigh when she was done. “When I was talking to him, a customer walked up. He claimed to be a customer, at least. He said he wanted cat bones and … all kinds of shit, whatever. But he didn’t feel right. I just—damn it, I didn’t notice it, I didn’t think about it, I was so—I was looking for you.”
His hand tightened around hers.
“I felt better when I got farther away, but I thought it was because I was, I don’t know, actively searching or something. I was worried because you hadn’t answered my text and I just … Fuck.”
Because it was all about her, right? All about her and her stupid fucking feelings.
“Ain’t yon fault. How you was s’posed to—”
“I was supposed to be fucking paying attention when something suddenly felt wrong in the air. I was supposed to be doing my fucking job and thinking about what that shit meant, and don’t tell me you don’t know exactly what I mean.”
Yeah. That was great. Why not piss off and upset him, when he’d just forgiven her for pissing off and upsetting him?
Fuck.
The road brightened as they got farther from Downside: more lights, better ones. Unbroken ones. The Chevelle zoomed under those lights, fast enough to almost turn them into a solid streak, and Edsel remained silent and unmoving.
He wasn’t the only one.
Two hours later she’d lost count. Lost count of how many cigarettes she’d smoked, how many bumps she’d sneaked in the bathroom, how many times she’d reminded herself it was all her fault. Two hours later and she finally took a couple more Cepts while she and Terrible stood outside the emergency-room doors, watching nothing much happen in the parking lot.
Two hours until Edsel’s wife, Galena, finally came outside.
He’d been stabbed a dozen times. He was concussed. His ribs were broken. They knew that. What they didn’t know was whether or not he’d live, and the weight of that question looked heavy on Galena’s curly head, slowed her steps even more than her pregnant belly had when Chess saw her a few weeks before.
Oh right. Her friend, the one she’d totally let down and allowed to almost be killed, the one she’d practically handed over to the people who wanted to kill him because she was too busy worrying about her love life to focus on everyone around her? He had a wife and a baby on the way.
What was the record for number of people fucked over in a single day, because she was pretty fucking sure nobody could beat her at that one.
Galena’s skin shone dark in the flat yellow glow of the bug lights outside the entrance as she made her way to where Chess stood against the wall with Terrible’s arms around her. At least there was that; they weren’t in Downside so they didn’t have to be so careful, and if the hospital Goodys and the doctors and Elder-Doctors looked at them strangely, she didn’t give a fuck.
“Were woken up he a time,” she said, her sweet high voice barely a whisper. “Gave you name, he done. An some other name I ain’t knowing, maybe you do?”
Chess shifted position, careful not to break contact with Terrible. Not then, when she needed him—well, she always needed him, but at that moment the strength of his body against hers was pretty much all that kept her from having a total fucking fit. Especially not when she heard that Edsel had come around and said her name. He probably blamed her.
She hoped he did, anyway, because if he didn’t, that was just further proof that he was someone whose friendship she didn’t deserve.
“What name he gave you?”
“Agneta Katina. You know she? Ain’t—ain’t like some other dame he got, aye? He ain’t—”
“Naw, naw.” Terrible’s grip tightened on Chess’s hand. “Ed ain’t pull that, you knowin that one. Heard that name before, we did. Thinkin that what knowledge he wanted to give, aye, Chess? Be what Gordon Samms were sayin, you recall?”
Shit, that was right. She’d made a note on it, even, and then hadn’t asked Terrible about following it up. Stupid. “Has he ever said it before, Galena?”
“Never hearin it.”
Chess glanced at Terrible. He shook his head. “Ain’t got shit back on it yet. Not one of Bump’s, not one Berta knowin.”
“Did he say anything else, Galena? Anything at all?”
“Just you name, an that one.”
Okay, then. At last they had somewhere to start—well, not start, but somewhere to go next. Chess guessed that as much as she hated to leave Galena there, they were going to have to.
But first … “Did he talk to anyone in particular today, do you know? Or go somewhere he doesn’t usually, anything like that?”
Galena considered it for a minute. “Went he lookin for stuff on the morn, see, stuff I can make up for the booth or what he can sell right off the booth, bones an such an all, if you diggin me?”
“Where did he go?”
“Ain’t said. Just that him were headin out, had he some guesses on some animal teeths to find.”
“He— Where? I mean, I know he didn’t say, but did he say anything that might give you a clue, or did—”
“Fuck.” Terrible held up his phone. “All gone again. Sent one over to give the house a check, dig, the three watchin em dead and all them gone.”
“All—the ones you just told me about at Bump’s, the ones who took the speed?”
He nodded.
Damn it! “How the fuck is that happening? How are they being found, how are they being taken?”
His face was grim as he pulled his keys from his pocket. “ ’Sgo have us a look.”
Not that it made a difference. They’d found exactly what they’d found at the other safe house: a building empty of everything but corpses. No clues. No nothing.
But they’d gotten a name. So after spending a sleepless night doing lines and berating herself, Chess went to the only place she could think of to get some information: the Church library.
The name “Agneta Katina” turned up a few hits in the system, the most recent being a woman who’d died in Sweden during Haunted Week. Chess wrote down the information but without much hope. Sure, it was entirely possible some dead Swedish ghost was working with the person infiltrating Downside with ghost-cut speed, but it seemed like a long shot.
The search results indicated another page available, though, so she clicked on the link. Probably nothing, a follow-up on the dead Swedish woman, or maybe a—
A ship.
Holy fuck, it was a boat. Not just any boat, either; a privately owned ex-military ship, converted into a freighter/transport ship for a shipping company. KVB Shipping, it was called.
She scribbled it down and started a new search, aware of her heart pounding faster in her chest
but ignoring it. It could be nothing, it could still be nothing. Drug dealing wasn’t usually something corporations got involved in.
But drug smuggling was definitely something shipping companies got involved in, and if they could find someone, if they could find some of the sailors from the ship who might talk to them, who might give them some names … She knew enough from Bump to know that it was pretty easy to bribe some dockworkers and shipworkers to look the other way while a couple of cases were loaded or unloaded.
KVB Shipping wasn’t just a corporation, it seemed. It was a division of a larger corporation. Shit, she should have paid more attention to this stuff in school, because figuring out what all those initials and titles meant wasn’t easy. Stockholders, yes, she knew what those were, and she knew what a CEO was, but CEOs weren’t usually doing a lot of work on-site with ships, right?
And KVB had like a dozen different divisions. Shipping. Media and Entertainment. Housewares. Technology—that’s right, they’d introduced some new kind of cellphone or something, hadn’t they? She had some vague memory of seeing a news story about it one day while she smoked a kesh and watched one of those mindless TV shows about how the latest gadget was the only road to real happiness.
KVB Chemical. She jotted that one down, along with KVB— Oh, KVB owned part of Triumph City’s major-league baseball team, the Elders. Did that mean— No, because different divisions also owned part of several other cities’ teams.
So who the hell owned the company to begin with? The actual business records on the mainframe were dull stuff, annual reports in incomprehensible business-ese, but … Hold on. She might be able to get the information a lot more easily elsewhere, right?
She logged out of the Church database and opened an Internet window. Funny, she’d never really used the Net for case research before, but why would she? Her cases usually involved private rather than public information, and either way the Church’s Computer and Data department—sometimes referred to as the Code Squad—kept as tight a grip on the cyberworld as the Church did on the real one; every page, every website, every bit of information available online, had been cleared through them first.
