I smirk. “Like you said: she’s just better at it than you.”
“She used to be,” he says. “But not anymore. She used to be strong enough to break the strongest collector. Because she understands what she is and she doesn’t fight it. She takes from the weak and gives to the strong: it’s what we all do; she’s just more honest about it. She takes what she needs and doesn’t squander life on the weak. She doesn’t fritter it away on trade or excess or sex workers. She’s not foolish,” he smirks, “not like you and me. She’s a survivor. She hoards and waits and becomes strong. If you’re smart, you’ll learn from her.”
I want to deny what he’s saying, but I can’t. It all rings true. And when push came to literal shove, she cut me down rather than let me drag her into an escape attempt that might have gotten her killed. As much as I want to believe that, if we ever get free, Ophelia would help me learn to survive, I’m slowly figuring out what exactly that means to her.
“Is that what you did?” I ask. “Learn how to betray other collectors from Ophelia? How does it feel to prey on your own kind?”
“We’re not predators. We’re something much more than that.” He’s got a crazy gleam in his eyes that sends warning bells through my body.
I lean slightly away.
“Why are we like this?” His question is a challenge, like he wants to see if I know the answer.
“Like what?”
He reaches for my forehead, and I jostle backward, dodging his reach. But he wasn’t really trying, and he just smiles at my evasion.
“Why do we have the power of God in our hands?” he asks.
“I’m pretty sure it’s just bad luck.” Even people who have the genetic marker for collecting don’t always express. It’s just my luck to be one of them. Even the original vaccine that set everything in motion was a case of side effects piled on bad luck with a side-order of mutation. It’s not like anyone created this ability on purpose. Although now that we have it, people like Dr. Brodsky are trying to recreate it. Make a machine that can do it.
I’m not sure if that will be better or worse.
“Why can we concentrate so many lives in us?” Valac continues, ignoring my verbal swipe. “For what possible reason, if not so we can live those lives? We can collect because it is our nature to take that into us. To live. To live longer. Don’t you see, little bird, we will outlast them all. It’s the one thing we were built to do. To relieve the weak of their lives, gather them into us, and make ourselves strong. To become immortal like the gods.”
“Sure. That makes perfect sense.”
He laughs. It’s the light-hearted, no-care-in-the-world laugh he had when I first arrived. “I’m not crazy, Lirium. At least, I hope not. Because there’s no hope at all for me then.”
I frown, thinking there’s not much hope for any of us. But I keep that inside, wondering where Valac is going with all this talk.
He gets serious again and steps closer. I take a half step back, and he nods, allowing.
“You have no soul, Lirium.” His face is back to the wild-intense look.
That may be true, but I don’t need to hear it from him. “You’re one to talk.”
But that doesn’t give him even a second’s worth of pause. “When you collect, those holes you feel… those are the empty spaces where your soul should be. You know what I’m talking about,” he says, and I don’t deny it. I’m pretty sure every collector feels it. “Your soul is a tattered, gossamer thing that’s gone with a strong gust.” He gestures with his hands for effect, demonstrating the demolishing of my soul with a sweep of his splayed fingers. “It’s gone—do you know why? For every life you take, you lose a piece of it. And if you have no soul, little bird, you damn well better live forever. Because if you don’t, there’s something much worse than death waiting for you. I know… I’ve tasted it.” He loses the crazy eyes for a moment and looks genuinely afraid.
That look makes my heart stutter. “Wait, what? What do you mean?”
He swallows and comes out of that fear-stricken look. He gives me a grim smile. “You’ll be glad to know I talked Kolek out of cutting off half your fingers.”
I blink at the swerve in subject. “Okay…”
He looks me in the eyes with a softness I don’t care for a bit. “I am sorry, little bird.”
My stomach clenches. “Sorry about what?”
But he just turns away and strides toward the door. When he waves his hand, it slides open. Outside are Kolek’s two thugs—Nico and two-pints. Valac brushes past them without a look back. They come in, and the bottom drops out of my stomach.
They don’t come close right away. The door slides closed behind them. That’s when I notice that they’re covered head to toe: black turtlenecks, coarse pants, boots. Gloves. They each slide on a black ski mask that covers their faces, leaving just a filmy screen over where their eyes are, so they can see through.
There’s not an inch of skin showing on their bodies. Nowhere I can touch them.
I clench my fists, but I can’t even get a swing in before the first blow plows into my stomach, knocking all the air from me. I double over. A smack to my face comes next, whipping my head to the side and sending me down to Kolek’s pure-white carpet. The pain follows a half-second later and my vision blurs. I struggle to get to my hands and knees, but a kick shoves my stomach into my spine and lifts me into the air, twisting me over. I’m on my back, staring at the ceiling, choking, my collapsed lungs fighting for air. Pain races through the center of me, shooting to every nerve ending and making them scream, even though I can’t.
One of the thugs hauls me up and holds me as a punching bag for the other. I can’t tell them apart. I just feel the fists pummeling my body, right-left, right-left. I lose count. The pain is one giant lump, every organ inside me beaten. I throw up. The punching one steps aside just in time. Then he draws his fist back and clocks me square on the jaw. My head whips to the side so hard it bangs against the shoulder of the thug holding me.
Darkness crowds my vision, and I have a sense that I’ve been dropped. I fall slowly to the floor in a collapsing tower of pain. My face plows deep in the plush carpet.
Consciousness flies away. I don’t fight it.
I’m not sure if I want to wake up again.
I look in the mirror and check my bruises.
The ones on my face have faded to light-brown imprints of fists. It’s been a week since Kolek’s men used me for a punching bag—my punishment for trying to escape. According to Valac, it could have been worse. I haven’t had a chance to ask Ophelia. Or confront her for betraying me and sabotaging our escape. She hasn’t come to visit, and they haven’t let me out of my room. The only person I’ve seen for a week has been a small-mouthed man who delivers my food, gives me a disdainful look, and leaves without a word. It’s like I’m living in a hotel with unfriendly room service. And locked doors and black, metal bars on the windows.
The bars are to keep me in, not anyone else out.
I twist and look over my shoulder. The bruises on my back have turned yellowish brown. I hope that’s a good sign. They look better than the green, fist-sized blotches that still cover my stomach and part of my chest. I gingerly press two fingers into my belly. The sharp pain that used to be there is starting to fade. I have to push deeper before I find it, and I’m not too eager to do that.
I wash up and pull on an undershirt. The supply of clothes in the dresser drawers is dwindling, and my pinch-mouthed keeper will have to start taking away laundry as well as dishes soon. I slowly ease to the floor and force my body through a set of pushups. Then I lean against the side of the bed, not liking how that simple effort made my insides moan and my chest wheeze. I don’t think I’ve broken anything important; otherwise I wouldn’t be able to do pushups at all.
I breathe through the pain while I flip open my palm screen.
Technically, I could send a message to Candy or the police, but I’m also certain that Kolek is tracking my phone, and I
’d be dead before anyone arrived to help. As if anyone would come. A memory of Elena and her apple perfume holding vigil at Tilly’s bedside flashes through my mind, and I press my eyes closed against it. The price of me not returning to Madam A’s isn’t just failing to rescue Ophelia and serving a mob boss who trafficks in life energy. Madam A promised to put Tilly at the bottom of the list for transfers if I didn’t come back. It eats a hole in my stomach that grows larger with each passing day. I hold on to the hope that Madam A’s not the type to carry through on something that might actually hurt the kids. And that Elena won’t find out.
I suck in a breath, open my eyes, and bury that thought under a mountain of determination to get out of Kolek’s mob. I can’t chance making a run for it again—Kolek won’t bother with beating me up a second time. The only way out is to convince him I’m not going to try… then bide my time. He won’t keep me locked up in my room forever. He’ll want to use me again, and when he does, I’d better do a damn good job of convincing him I’m worth keeping alive… at least until I can figure out a way to escape.
I swipe through the pages on my palm screen, keeping my searches innocuous. We’re in LA, so the news is mostly gossip out of Hollywood. Some young actor having a meltdown or going into rehab, throwing away all her potential. I skip over that, but the real news isn’t any better. People dying. Wars brewing. More legislation supposedly tightening the regulations on bean counters, to make sure they account for every last actuarial factor before transferring someone out. All of it is depressing, so I end up watching TV. I’ve seen more shows in the last week on my palm than I have in the last two years. It helps keep me from going out of my mind with boredom, but only barely.
My regular morning check of the mortuary reports doesn’t turn up anyone named Tilly.
It grates against me like an itch I can’t scratch that I don’t know her last name. That I never asked Elena. Not that it matters one way or the other. There’s nothing I can do from inside Kolek’s compound. Still, I search every morning. I’ve tried paging through the regular public records, too, but kids’ files are sealed until they’re eighteen.
Or until they turn up in the morgue.
My door slides open without a tone or any sign of warning. I close my palm screen before I look up, expecting to see pinch-mouth back to gather up my breakfast dishes.
It’s Ophelia.
I stare for a beat too long, then push myself to my feet. “Back to finish me off?” The bitterness in my voice fans the hot coals of my anger and flares it to life again.
The door closes behind her. Her little black dress hugs the soft curves of her body. Spots of light ripple across the metallic sheen of the dress’s fabric. Half the thing is black netting that reveals more of her chest than it hides.
I hate that I notice.
“Lirium, baby…” She takes a hesitant step toward me.
“Seriously?” I ask. She freezes mid-step, still half a dozen feet away. “I think you can stop with all the pet names. Save it for the other suckers you lure in to work for Kolek.”
She didn’t bring you here, a stupid voice inside me says. That was your idea. The stupid part also feels a twinge at the look of pain on her face.
She doesn’t say anything for a moment, but she has the decency to drop her gaze and study her pale fingers instead of me. “You’re not going to believe me—”
“Probably not.”
Her shoulder twitches. She nods. “I don’t blame you for being angry, ba—Lirium.”
I take a small amount of satisfaction from the way her hands twist, one gripping the other, like they’re in some kind of battle to hold back her discomfort.
She finally looks up, eyes dark and round and soft. “But if I hadn’t stopped you, there’s no way you would have made it out of there alive.”
“I guess we’ll never know.” I want her to say she was wrong to betray me, not make excuses for it. I may have been an idiot for trying to rescue her, for caring about her enough to try, but when we had a chance to run she didn’t have to cut me down before I got two steps out the door.
She slides closer, untwists her hands, then stops at my stone cold look. “Lirium—”
“You didn’t have to come with me,” I cut her off, neglecting the fact that I wouldn’t have left her behind. “But you didn’t have to stop me either. You’re worse than Valac. At least I already knew he was a lapdog for Kolek.”
She stares at me with those big, dark eyes. “If I had run with you, they would have shot us both before we left the building. If I had let you run without me, they would have killed you. And you’re only here, stuck in Kolek’s mob, because of me, baby. I know that.”
I cringe at the pet name, and I open my mouth to rebuke her again, but she’s still talking.
“I’m not going to let them kill you, not if it’s possible for me to prevent it,” she says. “But running then was a Guppy move, baby. I had to stop you.”
Her hands are spread wide. They’re asking forgiveness. Part of me wants to believe she was trying to protect me. That she’s not simply a “survivor,” as Valac calls her, willing to suck the life out of me to save her own skin. But the betrayal still stings. Anger and hope take turns churning my bruised stomach.
I don’t let it show on my face.
She inches closer in her teetering spiked-metal heels, peering up at me with solemn eyes, like she’s hanging on every breath that’s heaving out of my chest. She’s close enough that I can smell her lilies-and-rose funeral perfume.
“Can you forgive me?”
“Maybe.” A sinking part of me wants to latch onto her explanation like a life raft. Practically speaking, I don’t have a lot of options for help inside the Kolek estate. If she won’t escape with me, then I’ll at least need her to not stand in my way. The last thing I want is to have to fight her. I’m not strong enough, even if I wasn’t half beaten up. Plus the idea of fighting Ophelia makes my stomach tie in knots. Part of me—the part clinging to the life raft—is still hoping she’ll change her mind. Want to come with me the next time.
She lets out a breath, a slow leak through pursed lips, like she’s gently blowing out a candle. It makes me want to touch her, but I’m not that much of an idiot. Touching Ophelia is like flirting with death and hoping it won’t decide to get serious with you.
“At some point,” I say, “I would really like to work up from Guppy status. Minnow at the least. I think I’ll start by not turning my back on you for a while.”
A small smirk erases the kissable look of before, but then it’s replaced by a frown. She reaches for my face. I lean away, taking a half-step that bangs my legs into the bed.
She pulls her hand back but the frown remains. “How bad did they hurt you, baby?”
I’m tempted to tell her they crippled me for life and it’s all her fault. “I’m fine,” I say.
She runs a look over my chest, then reaches for the bottom of my t-shirt.
I grab her wrist. “But I’m not in the mood to play show and tell right now.” I flick her hand away, keeping skin contact only long enough to let her know I’m serious.
Her lips draw into a thin line. “I didn’t know… they wouldn’t tell me what they did to you. Even Valac refused to talk to me about it, just said you were still alive. I insisted they couldn’t send you out on collections, not yet. I told them I would do any collecting they needed while you rested.”
“So you’re responsible for a week of me being locked in my room?” I’m desperate for a life energy hit, but a week of no collections also meant a week of no payouts. That probably did buy me time to recover.
“I would have come to visit sooner, but they wouldn’t let me.” She takes a step closer again, and I allow it. Probably because I really am an idiot. She’s close enough to touch me, but she doesn’t, leaving a space of heated air between us. “Let me help you heal, baby.”
She reaches for the bruise on my cheek, and this time I don’t flinch away. Her soft hands are s
lightly cool until the life energy trickles in and heats my skin. I feel the buzz immediately, and I lean into her hand before I even think about what I’m doing. It’s been so long, and the rush feels so good… the ache from the bruise starts to fade. I should cycle this life energy back to her, but then again, she owes me. I keep my hand at my side.
With her free hand, she lifts the corner of my t-shirt to peer at the bruises underneath. This time, I let her. Maybe if she sees the full impact of her decision to betray me, she’ll be more willing to come with me next time.
She sucks in a breath. “Lirium… I’m so sorry,” she whispers. The transfer to my cheek stops, and she lifts my shirt with both hands. I let her pull it over my head. She takes a deep breath, gaze roaming my chest. It does something to me, and only then do I realize that letting Ophelia take off my clothes is a serious mistake.
I bend to reach for the t-shirt she’s dropped on the floor, but her hands on my chest stop me. I straighten, and she carefully lines up one of her small hands with one of my bruises and starts to transfer. The buzz ripples through me, right at my core, and I’m almost instantly high. She slides her other hand to find another bruise and floods it with life energy. She’s intent, gaze on my chest, soft breaths brushing against my skin. Her first hand shifts to a new bruise and transfers more. She’s reaching me deep inside, easing the aches and pains, bringing my whole body alert. She keeps moving, shifting, drawing her hands lightly across my chest as she seeks out my wounds.
It’s insane how much I want to pull her down to the bed. Even though I’m still angry as hell. A fire heats my cheeks that has nothing to do with the life energy coursing through me. Am I really this easy to manipulate?
I grab her wrists again, gently this time, and pull them from my body. “I’m fine. Really.” I bend down to scoop up my shirt and slip it on. Maybe I’m not a complete idiot after all. “Did you come here just to apologize and heal my wounds?”
She steps back, dropping her gaze.
The Debt Collector (Season 1) Page 16
