We strolled in and another of the Fae with us laid a hand upon the husband, single shake of his head. Wife was next up, and again, single shake of his head. When he went to lay a hand upon the cat child, the mother clung tightly to her. I wasn't sure why we even bothered to confirm. The yellow eyes and fangs weren't enough?
And holy cow, how many more changed like this were hiding in their rooms?
"How long has she been like this?" I asked the mother.
"It started slowly, with just some little areas of peach fuzz, but then we woke up one day and she was like this. Are you going to take her? She's only two years old." Tears streamed down the mother's face and the father positioned himself in between us, like he'd have a chance to stop us if we decided to take her.
"No one is going to take your child," I said before Burrom or any of the other Fae could speak.
The mother's eyes came to rest upon me. "You swear?"
I couldn't swear for everyone so I made the only promise I could. "They'd have to do it over my dead body." I'd kill Cormac myself if he tried. I glanced over at Burrom and he looked everywhere but me. I didn't add that it could possibly come to that and then they were on their own.
We left the room and the family with a false sense of peace. Burrom took the accounting sheet from our Fae helpers as we both headed to our next potential victims -- oops, I mean humans.
"Don't touch her, Burrom," I said, referring to the cat girl.
"She's a babe. I'd have no use for her."
"And when she's not?"
"I'm going to ground before that will happen."
I nodded. I could accept that. I wasn't sure when exactly he was going to ground, but he'd be there long after she became an adult. At that point, she was on her own. Kids, yeah, okay, I'd go down with the ship for them. In this world, as an adult, you had to help yourself a little, because there wasn't any hero showing up to save you.
At some point, I'd thought I was a hero in the making. All I made was a gigantic mess. My cape had gone up in flames that night in New York. The small fragment of the human population left hated me. I'd grown up a loner, only watching out for myself. Then at some point, I'd started to care. I'd started to want people. Now look at me. What a mess. I longed for the days I didn't care. And to make matters worse, I'd emptied the last contents of my flask a floor ago.
It took the entire day to go through all the floors and we still missed the lion's share. Word was spreading fast and people were disappearing. I didn't know where they hid, but as word got out, less and less people were in their rooms by the end of the day.
I'd still seen more than I wanted to. There was a spider woman on floor fifteen that had a cocoon built in the corner of the room. On eighteen, we had a giant. The guy used to be a professional linebacker, but now he couldn't sit in a chair without crushing it. A woman on twenty couldn't leave the shower stall for more than hour because of the water that streamed from her pores and there was a human pretzel on thirty-two. Today had been a serious revelation.
When I got to the penthouse, I immediately went to the bar. I knew what had to be done next and I was going to need a little anesthetic to go through with it. I also needed something to take the edge off seeing Cormac.
Burrom sat down and laid the list on the table as we waited for the rest of the crew to show. This was a "closed-door" meeting. I poured myself another finger of whiskey. Nothing good ever came of these, and this time I'd be holding a gun on the virtual firing squad.
I looked down at my glass and added another finger of the amber liquid. It wouldn't make it right, but it would make it a lot easier to be wrong.
Would I be able to live with myself if I went even further down this path? The thought scared me. I swallowed back the drink before I asked myself any more questions I'd prefer not to know the answer to. I was officially living through the apocalypse; this wasn't the right time for moral dilemmas or deep soul searching.
Cormac and Dodd walked in next, followed by Rogo and Vitor a few minutes later, which made Sabrina's absence that more obvious. I missed having at least a little estrogen in the room besides myself.
Cormac silently pointed at the list on the table. Burrom nodded and I watched as Cormac reached down and started flipping through.
"Everyone under eighteen is on a different sheet," I said, still feeling the burn of the liquor in my throat. That had been my personal contribution to saving the young’uns. I hoped he got the hint and would leave them alone.
He nodded, not bothering to look up from the pages. Any chance of this being civil between us disappeared as quickly as my next shot.
"The changed are about ten percent of the human population," Burrom said.
"Looks closer to twelve," Cormac corrected, still looking through the list. "This should be enough to do everything."
"Everything" entailed a food detail, a gas detail and a Sabrina detail, all forced labor that would be immune to the rippers. How did it come to this? Do what we want or you and your families get booted out. No one had spoken the words, but we'd all known what was coming as soon as the idea of a list had been formulated.
It made me wonder how close to the door I was now that Cormac wasn't interested anymore. Nah, considering the contempt he was barely hiding now, I'd already be out if that was going to happen. But the humans, that was a different story altogether.
If we didn't force the changed to help, would we survive? If they wanted to stay, they should have to kick in, right? But sending someone out there when we weren't even sure of what really kept the rippers at bay? Not to mention, we didn't know what else may lie in wait, or when another freak storm would spring up.
Cormac finally looked up from the papers.
"We've got enough here to replace the people we've lost for the food squads and fuel squads. These numbers are much better than I anticipated." He looked to me and then Burrom. "And these all had magic levels high enough to probably make it through a night?"
Probably? Was I the only one that found that disturbing? I looked around the room and I knew I was.
"Yes," Burrom said.
I was feeling all warm and fuzzy from the booze and yet I still cared. "Fuck it," I said and took a swig right from the bottle.
Cormac turned toward me and squinted his eyes just slightly.
"That's not your normal brand," he said in an unflattering way. "I guess these days you'll drink anything, if it comes in the form of a shot."
"Trust me. You all want me drunk for this." I lifted the bottle in a silent cheers salute to him and the room.
He turned back to the rest of the group. No one else looked or said a word, maybe preferring to pretend that I wasn't getting drunk in the corner by myself.
Cormac took another quick glance in my direction, or more accurately, at the bottle I held. I lifted it to my lips and took a swig, egging him on.
He turned away, not taking the bait. "Let's vote," he said.
Everyone in the room had to vote. It was a complete sham, since the only person whose opinion mattered was Cormac's. Still, they continued on like it counted.
Burrom said yes, no shock there.
"This will cut down on the runs my people take? I don't want more than one of my guys out there per squad," Rogo said.
"Done," Cormac replied.
"Fine by me." It was another typical vote. Rogo didn't care a wink about the humans. He just wanted to secure a better deal for himself.
"And you promised me humans for Sabrina," Dodd chimed in next, all too eager to get his hands on some human resources.
"Yes, I told you that is a priority."
Dodd nodded, at least having the decency to look a little ashamed.
Vitor didn't argue for anything, just said yes. Of all the people in the room, I found myself feeling for Vitor the most. He was as out of place as Ashley was in the second half of Gone with the Wind. Just a shell of the man he used to be. I didn't know if it was losing his sister or the world the way it was. The ones that
had less fight inside to begin with were faring the worst, if they remained alive. I mean, hell, I wasn't jumping out of bed in the mornings either, these days. When it came down to it, we'd all been slowly losing something inside. For some, they slowly lost the drive to fight for survival. For others, that fight was so strong it drove out the last shreds of their humanity.
It was there now, as they all turned their stares towards me. Colder. Meaner. Desperate. And then I realized, I could drink that whole bottle, it wouldn't change anything. I couldn't vote yes on this. I didn't want to lose another piece of myself. I didn't know if I'd have anything left, as piece after piece was chipped away. Maybe the death of your body wasn't the worst outcome. It was the death of your soul.
I thought I'd found a place in the world, a weird awkward place, but a niche. I'd started to care for people. And just when I started to think I might have gotten the hang of this life, I got knocked on my ass again. But it hadn't all been a loss. I knew the lines I couldn't cross now and I knew the things I'd sacrifice. This line was thick, black and ugly and I wasn't going to cross it, no matter what they said.
"You aren't asking them to do anything you haven't already done yourself," Cormac said as I stood silently; he had his cold mask in place but it slipped just a bit when he talked. I could see the anger there.
"With one huge difference, it was my choice."
Dodd looked down. Burrom didn't care and it was clear. Rogo looked angry I was dragging this out. Vitor? Yeah, he was still looking half-dead.
"I won't vote for this."
"We need this. I'm not leaving until she votes for it," Rogo said.
"Neither am I," Dodd added.
I saw a flicker in Cormac's eyes. Would he back me? Is this, right here, the very thing I was looking for from him? I knew he cared about me…or did. I knew he cared about his people, but could I be with someone that could steam roll over every other thing without a twinge of guilt? Please, let it be a flicker of remorse over what we were going to force people to do or a spark that I still mattered to him.
His face shut down again as I watched. "You know the rules. You're in the room, you vote."
I grabbed another bottle of booze and headed toward the door. "Then I'll leave the room."
"It doesn't work that way!" Rogo yelled out.
I paused by the door. "Make it work or don't, but you're going to have to do it without me." And then I left to go drink the night away on the roof. It was Cormac's garden refuge, but whatever. He was busy with a meeting, anyway.
Chapter Fifteen
"What are you doing up here?" Cormac asked from somewhere behind me.
I waved the bottle in the air above my head as I sat on the ledge, my feet dangling over the side.
"You're afraid of heights," he stated as he walked toward the ledge.
"Yes, I am, but…" I paused to read the label on the bottle I held, "Mr. Glen Livet doesn't seem to mind them."
"No rippers out tonight?"
"I told them to go away."
"Nice trick. I don't know which version of Jo I prefer, the one that doesn't give a shit about anyone and is a one women machine, or the Jo that has found some calling to protect the innocents."
"I know I'd prefer the Cormac that doesn't speak right now."
"I'm going to do what I have to…"
"Yeah, yeah…I've heard," I said, cutting him off midsentence. "And the truth is, I get it. I understand why we're doing this. Still doesn’t make it right."
"I didn't come up here to fight. We decided to try doing volunteers first. I just wanted to let you know."
My fuzzy brain was trying to tell me that he was handing me an olive branch but I was too drunk to care. "We're you always like this?"
"Like what?" he asked, hands in his pockets. He was standing a few feet from me and didn't look as if he planned on coming any closer.
"Cold." I asked in the pretense of the conversation but deep down it was personal.
"When you live as long as I have, it happens. It's not something that you choose, and it's not something that happens overnight, but it happens. So no, I don't flinch at making these decisions."
I looked out at the expanse of the destruction, illuminated by the full moon. It was a scene I'd helped create. I couldn't look at the devastation without remembering my part in it. Each crumpled building on the horizon added to my burden of guilt.
"Does it bother you? Being cold like this?" Anger and resentment bled into my words.
"No, it's easier."
"But not when it comes to your people. Then you care." People that I still wasn't a part of, or he wouldn't have been able to walk away from me so easily.
"Everyone has their weaknesses," he said.
I felt I’d been discarded pretty easily. Did I care about how he treated humans, or was I more selfish and angry about how he treated me? That I couldn't seem to stop myself from wanting him, even now, bothered me as much as the destruction hundreds of feet below.
"I'm going with the search party looking for Sabrina," I said in my best authoritative voice, changing the subject. It would have sounded a lot better if I hadn't accented it with a hiccup.
"Fine, you can come with me. The group is leaving here at seven tomorrow morning."
"You're going? Who's going to keep things in order here?"
"Dodd."
"No way Dodd is going to stay behind."
"I've already talked to him. He's not immune to the rippers , but I am. He'll be dead weight to us and he knows it."
It made sense, but even in my blurred thought process, I was taken aback. "How are you so sure that you're immune?"
"When you got back the other night, I took a little stroll."
Before I could ask another question, he walked away.
"Don't fall off the ledge," were his parting words as I listened to his retreating footsteps.
Chapter Sixteen
We'd taken the trucks this time but left them about five miles shy of where we had found Colleen. We all agreed that approaching on foot felt safer than a truck , which would be spotted quicker.
"I'm just saying…" Dark paused and I saw him look back to make sure there was enough distance between us and the changed humans to be sure they couldn't overhear, "this doesn't look like the pick of the litter," he finished saying.
I'd initially thought the same thing myself, when I first saw the two humans that volunteered to come with us this morning. They had been surprisingly friendly toward me, which was the first thing I'd found alarming.
Dodd had been giving Dark such an interrogation about what he wanted him to do that it had delayed the entire group. Cormac had then got involved, since Dark would've sat there and listened to Dodd's instructions for hours. While they had been doing their thing, I'd gotten to know Chip and Katie.
"They're perfectly suited for what we need," I said.
"How's that?" Dark asked.
"Chip, that's the tall lanky guy in his mid-forties with the sandy colored hair. Chip is his nickname. He was a computer whiz before the shattering."
"How is that going to help?"
"Hey, Chip?" I called over the short expanse.
"Yeah?"
"Do you know where we are?"
"Latitude 36° 14' 32.442 by Longitude 115° 7' 4.8072."
"Thanks!"
"How did he do that?" Dark asked.
"When he changed, his brain started taping into the satellites that are still in orbit around the planet."
"Can he track people?" Dark asked.
"He thinks so. We've got a picture of Sabrina with us. I don't know how much juice it uses, so I wanted to wait until we got closer to where we found Colleen before we tried it out."
"Can the other one do anything?" he asked, eyeing them up with a new appreciation.
"The little strawberry blond used to be a gymnastics teacher."
"She looks like a pixie."
I nodded.
"Katie?"
"Yeah, Jo?" she an
swered.
"Can you show Dark a little demo?"
Her face lit up the moment I asked, clearly pleased to use her new talent and my heart swelled a little, just glad that there was some happiness in the midst of all of this.
She leapt about twenty feet in the air, did a few spins and landed gracefully on her feet.
"She didn't make a sound. If we do find them, she should be useful surveillance. She's been testing out her skills. Says she can jump about forty feet without making any noise."
As much as I got a good feeling about these two humans, I didn't know if I completely trusted the changed. Come on, they were changing and no one had any idea when that changing would stop. But I wasn't sharing that part. Plus, this trip was more about recon than anything else.
"That's awesome," Dark said, as we started moving again. "What's the deal with Cormac and you?"
I wasn't surprised he asked: I'd been waiting for this question. Cormac was barely acknowledging me these days. You'd have to be dumb or blind not to notice that our relationship had taken a nose dive.
"We aren't getting along," I replied stating the obvious.
"Yeah, that much is clear. What's his beef?"
"I really don't want to get into it. We just don't see eye to eye. To be honest, once this is done and over with, I might try and go out on my own." I just didn't know where.
"You'll never be able to."
"Why? There are probably other communities out there, somewhere." It was my turn to look back now and make sure no one could hear. "If he didn't own the casino, it would be different."
"No, I didn't mean you couldn't. I meant he'll never let you."
"You're wrong. He doesn't want me here." I switched the pack I was carrying to my left shoulder, the weight starting to become a nuisance, now that we'd been on the road for a while.
"Then why's he having you watched again?"
"What are you talking about?" I asked Dark, startled by the question.
"You didn't notice? I figured you knew."
Shattered (Alchemy Series Book #3) Page 9
