And Kovit . . . He wouldn’t do it, right? They were friends.
But . . . were they really? Their arrangement had always been a matter of convenience, built on shared goals. And . . . well, he was a zannie. Boulder was right, they weren’t loyal to anyone aside from themselves and their creepy pain addiction.
What would Nita do if their places were reversed? If she were told to cut off someone’s body part in exchange for her life. Someone alive and breathing.
She thought of Fabricio, and the ear. But she hadn’t had a gun to her head at the time. If her mother had been holding a gun, would she have cut off his ear?
She thought she would have.
Could Nita really expect Kovit to choose her over his own life? After all, then they’d both still be alive. For a while, anyway.
Boulder smiled, gun steady. “So, what part shall I start with? An eye?”
Nita’s shoulders tensed, thinking of Mirella and her bloody eye patch. She imagined the knife sliding in, scooping her eye out, cutting it at the roots. How Boulder would pop it into his mouth like a boiled egg and swallow it whole.
“No.” Boulder paced back and forth. “Only two of those. They’re a delicacy. Maybe I should start with something small. To test the waters, see how potent the flesh is. A toe, then.” He laughed. “Don’t worry, I bet you won’t even miss it.”
Nita’s breath hitched as Boulder turned the gun on Kovit. “Now, bring me that toe, zannie.”
Finally, Nita’s eyes turned to Kovit.
It was harder than she expected to make herself look at him. Her neck felt stiff, and her whole body resisted, as though scared by what it might find. It was like a horror movie, where you knew something was behind you, but you could never seem to make your body turn quickly.
The gun sat in Boulder’s hand, a constant threat in case Kovit disobeyed.
How much was his freedom worth to him?
Her head finally turned, and she found him watching her, head tilted to the side, face unreadable. His mouth was tight, and his brows drawn. His eyes were dark, so dark they seemed to suck out the light in the room.
Her breath hitched, and the sound that came out was like a hiccup murdering a sob in her throat.
“Kovit . . .”
That was all she managed. She didn’t have anything else to say. What could she really say?
He approached, stride slow and sure, and then crouched beside her, weight resting on the balls of his feet so he seemed to be perching beside her, like a hawk. He was silent. The knife was loose in his hand.
Behind him, Boulder was smiling.
Nita swallowed, throat choked. This couldn’t be happening. Where had she gone so wrong?
Heart thundering in her chest, she tilted her chin to meet his gaze square on. She wasn’t going to go down without a fight.
He quirked an eyebrow.
And just like that, all the tension shattered, and she felt like the ass she was.
Her shoulders loosened, and she squeezed her eyes closed and let out a breath. “Don’t scare me like that.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
She gave him a half glare.
He grinned and twirled his knife. “All right. I did think about it, for about half a second.”
She shoved him gently. He smiled at her, and an answering smile tried to pull the corners of her mouth up.
Then he sat back and turned to Boulder with mocking eyes.
“You think I’m a fool?” Kovit’s voice was jeering. “I see how you hate me. I see what you think of me. You despise me. Once I cut that toe off, you’re going to shoot me anyway.”
Boulder’s eyebrows rose. “Aren’t you going to do it just in case?”
“No.” His eyes were challenging, and a smile played on his face. “If you want that toe, you’re going to have to come in here and get it.”
Boulder shrugged. “Fine. I will.”
He nodded to Lorenzo and Jorge, and the three of them approached the cage. Kovit tensed beside her, and Nita’s adrenaline spiked. She gripped the edge of the blanket. She was ready. This was their chance. The cage was opening.
Kovit was very good at taunting people into doing what he wanted.
The cage door buzzed, unlocking it. It opened an inch.
Boulder shot Kovit.
Nita screamed as the bullet barreled into his side, propelling him back. She kicked up the blanket, blocking their view, and tried tackling one of the men, she didn’t know which, and scrambled for his weapon.
Someone smashed her injured shoulder with the butt of his gun, and Nita’s grip slackened. Furious, she shoved forward, trying to throw herself out of the cage at the very least, but there was a hand around her wrist yanking her back, and somehow she found the ground rushing up and smashing into her.
Before Nita could scramble up, Lorenzo grabbed her arms and yanked them above her head, pinning them. Snarling, Nita reached her head around and sank her teeth into his arm. He swore, but didn’t let go until Nita ripped a piece of flesh off. It tasted salty and wet and made her mouth feel tingly, and she wondered if that was the effect of the unicorn bone in his bloodstream.
He cried out, and released her. Nita spat out the piece of flesh and tried to roll over, but someone booted her in the stomach, and she fell backwards. Her head smacked into the ground, and for a moment she couldn’t see anything; the force of her fall had temporarily blinded her.
And then her sight was back, but she felt nauseous when she looked at things and her eyes couldn’t seem to focus right.
Jorge knelt over her, pressing his bony knee into her stomach and shoving the breath out of her. She gasped for air as he forced his knee up into her diaphragm, and he grabbed one of her legs, knife in hand. Screaming, Nita reached up and grabbed his shirt, yanking him back, but the knife slipped in his hand and the blade dug into the side of her face, carving a deep gash down her cheek and approaching her ear. She could feel the blade scratching against her cheekbone, and it made a sound like chalk on a board, squeaky and ear piercing.
There was blood everywhere.
It got in her eye and blinded her, masking the world in a haze of red and stinging nonpain. She couldn’t stop the instinctive blinks as her eye tried to clear itself and failed. Her eyelashes dripped and stuck together.
Someone was screaming above her, and the pressure on her middle released as Jorge moved. But she couldn’t see what was happening, so she kicked and flailed blindly, and then tried to crawl toward the door. Jorge was shrieking, and Nita realized with a flutter of relief that Kovit must be alive, must be doing something, because no one else was going to help her.
But Boulder was watching it all, and he raised his gun again.
Nita howled and, half blind, launched herself at him, trying to knock his aim off before he hit Kovit again. She smashed into his legs, toppling him. She heard the crack as his body thundered to the ground, and the snarl that broke from his lips. Roaring, his body jerked, and he kicked at her face.
His boot connected, and her nose snapped with a crack and pop.
There was more blood, all down the front of her face, mixing with the gouge from her cheek. So much blood.
Hands were grabbing at her legs again, and then more hands were holding her down and someone removed her shoe and Nita screamed and screamed, but no one paid any mind.
The knife slid across her flesh with a sound like someone was shucking oysters.
Her baby toe came off with barely any pressure.
One moment, she could feel it, every capillary and vein, the cartilage and bone, all of it one piece of her body, all of it under her control. And then there was nothing, absence where once there had been sensation.
They hauled her back into the cage, and she continued thrashing, swinging around to try to hit the person responsible, but he’d already let go, and then she was on the ground in the cage.
There was a click as the door locked.
Blood dripped onto the floor. Nita couldn�
��t look, didn’t want to see the place where once her toe had been.
She twisted her head so she could use her clear eye to look out the door. Boulder and the guards stood outside the cage, all of them covered in blood.
Nita snarled at them. Her mouth tasted like iron and the bottom of Boulder’s boot.
“Well, that was unnecessarily difficult. Look at your face now. You really should have just cooperated from the start.” Boulder smiled.
Nita spat on the ground, a giant glob of clotted blood. One of her teeth came out too. She picked it up and put it back, hoping to repair the damage to the root before it was too late.
“Charming.” Boulder shrugged and turned to the guards, slipping into Spanish. “Bring me water and lemon juice.”
Jorge ran off.
Nita’s eyes went to Kovit, on the floor. His breathing was short and harsh, and there was so much blood, his blood, her blood, guard blood, she didn’t even know where his injuries were.
“It’s about time he got a taste of his own medicine.” Boulder’s voice was bitter.
Nita sneered. “Really? I thought he was giving you a taste of yours earlier.”
“Cute. I see his poor humor has rubbed off on you. But you have nothing to laugh about, little girl.”
Boulder turned away as Jorge returned with two glasses. Boulder popped the toe in the water first, and washed it. Then he dropped it in a glass of lemon juice, and it bobbed on the top, like a cherry on ice cream.
He toasted Nita. “To immortality.”
Then he drank it.
He swallowed her toe with an audible gulp and licked his lips after. “I love toes. Small and sweet.”
She wondered if he was the one who’d bought Fabricio’s toe too.
“Thanks for the entertainment and the snack.” His voice was mocking. “I’ll be back tomorrow. And maybe then I’ll try something different. That eye, perhaps, or even your sarcastic little tongue.”
Laughing, he turned away and left, leaving Nita trapped in a cage, missing a toe, to await her fate of being slowly eaten alive.
On the other side of the room, Kovit slumped on the floor, slowly bleeding out.
Thirty-Four
THERE WAS A sense of finality to the sound of the door slamming behind Boulder. The silence of the room was only broken by Kovit’s gasps of pain and Nita snorting out clots of blood.
She wiped her bloody eye and grabbed her nose, pulling it back into alignment so she could work on setting it. Then she started patching the tooth up enough that at least she wouldn’t lose it.
It was good to do these things. She could focus on them. What she could do. Not on the fact that she was trapped in the cage. That Boulder was going to let them starve to death. And then eat her. That their escape plan had completely and utterly failed. That Kovit was injured, and she didn’t know how badly.
Kovit.
Swallowing, she turned around and crawled over to him. He was lying on his side, his eyes closed and breathing shallow. He made a small whimpering sound when she approached.
“Kovit? Where were you hit?”
His eyelashes fluttered as he opened his eyes and winced. “On my side.”
“How bad?”
“I don’t know.”
She grabbed his shirt and tried to pull it off, but he cried out, and she stopped. She licked her bloody lips, then took the switchblade from his hand. It felt both slippery and sticky at the same time, and slid uncertainly in her palm.
Nita coughed up another clot of blood that had trickled down the back of her throat from her shattered nose. She tried not to think of how deep the gash on her cheek was, or how close it was to her eye. How she could feel the blood rolling into her eye socket, drying and sticking her eyelid closed.
And she especially tried not to think about the empty space where her baby toe used to be.
The blade sawed through Kovit’s T-shirt, and she peeled strips of it off his body. Beneath, his skin was so covered in blood she couldn’t figure out where the wound was.
She ran her hands gently over the sticky flesh until he winced. Leaning in with her good eye, she saw the bullet hole. It had entered into his side and exited his back. Just above the hip. An inch to the left, and it would have missed him. An inch to the right, and it would have hit his kidney.
She let out a breath. It wasn’t fatal.
Assuming she had water to wash the wound.
And soap.
And stitches.
Or something hot to cauterize it.
Or anything, really. But she didn’t. She had a switchblade, a torn-up novel, and . . . no, she didn’t have a blanket anymore; it was outside the cage now. It must have migrated there during the fight.
She used Kovit’s already gore-covered T-shirt to plug the wound and applied pressure, hoping to slow the blood flow.
Her throat closed and she snorted out another glob of dried blood. This was bad. The wound itself wasn’t horrific, but she didn’t think she could stop the bleeding. And judging by Kovit’s tight expression, it hurt a lot.
She leaned forward, throat parched. No water. No medical supplies. She didn’t dare waste her moisture on crying.
Kovit groaned and sat up beside her, and she scrambled, trying to keep the soggy T-shirt pressed against the wound. He leaned against the glass, face making a bloody cheek print on the surface.
“We’re really fucked, aren’t we?”
She nodded, mute.
“Any brilliant ideas how to get out?”
Nita shook her head.
He sighed, and picked up his switchblade from the floor where Nita left it. He rubbed it with one thumb, as though drawing reassurance from it.
“I’m sorry.” Nita’s voice was quiet.
“For what?”
“For doubting you.” Nita let out a breath as her nose snapped into place. “I was wrong.”
He shook his head, faint smile on his lips. “No. You don’t have to apologize.”
“I do. It’s my fault we’re here. It was my plan to get the money from Boulder.”
“And it was my plan to lure them into the cage to get out. And look how well that went.”
She snorted, but there was less blood this time. “True, that.”
Kovit tapped the glass with his pocketknife, eyes distant. He dug it into one pane and started drawing with it, carving stick figures. Nita was amused. He wasn’t a good artist.
“How’s the wound?” he asked.
“Which one?”
He laughed. “All of them.”
“Fine. It’d be a lot worse if I could feel pain.” Nita paused. “How do you feel?”
“Awful.” His eyes slid to meet hers briefly, and he gave her a wry grin. “I’m not good with pain.”
Nita stared at him, wondering if that was meant to be a joke.
Kovit didn’t seem to expect a response, as he turned back to his glass art.
Nita closed her eyes and kept up her healing. Her face wasn’t important. She just needed to stem the blood and set her nose. Her face didn’t need to be pretty to run away. Her toe, though, that she needed to do something with. She was worried it would screw up her balance with it missing, make it harder to run.
Nita let out a breath. If they were going to escape, they needed to do so quickly and treat Kovit’s wounds if he was going to survive. The clock was ticking.
She rolled her injured shoulder. The bones stayed fused. That was good. At least there was something positive.
They sat for another few minutes, the only sound the scritch-scritch-scritch of Kovit’s blade on the glass.
She eyed Kovit’s knife. She hadn’t had one of those last time she was in here. “Any way we could use that knife to escape?”
“How?”
“I . . . don’t know.”
He shook his head. “It’s a switchblade. It can’t cut through solid glass.”
“Right.”
They sat for a few more minutes, Kovit idly twirling his knife.
Finally, he asked. “Can’t you do something? I mean, you made your eyes have night vision. You just healed a fucking bullet wound. Can you do something with your muscles?”
She sighed. “I tried that before. I can make my muscles stronger, simulate the effects of steroids, push everything to the limit. But, um, I don’t know what to do after that. I nearly snapped my wrist last time—I ripped a tendon and shattered some fingers. Not a great time.”
Kovit stared at her, then a slow smile spread across his face.
“What?” she asked.
“Nita.” He gave her a semicondescending smile. “You’re talking to someone who grew up in the mafia. I can teach you how to throw a punch.”
“Oh.” Of course he could. Then she hesitated, looking at his switchblade. “Can you teach me how to use a knife so it breaks glass?”
He looked down and laughed. “I can do that too.”
Nita smiled, cracking the dried blood on her face so it fell in small flakes to the floor. “Then what are we waiting for?”
Elevating various chemicals in the body was step one. Adrenaline, to start with. Then a few others. Densify those arm muscles. Get some testosterone too. She felt like a witch, creating a potion in a pot, but her cauldron was her own body.
Kovit considered. “It might be good to throw first.”
“Throw?” Nita sat up, her whole body singing, ready to take on whatever was in store. Her muscles burned with the pressure. This was why messing around with your body was a bad idea—she knew she was going to crash, and it was going to be so awful she wouldn’t be able to mediate the aftereffects.
Kovit rose, wincing, blood dripping down his jeans, and demonstrated the right posture. Nita imitated, right foot in front, left behind, so that she’d be using her undamaged arm. Kovit grabbed one leg and moved it to the side. He squared her shoulders and then nodded.
“I don’t think throwing will do much.”
“I once saw a guy throw a playing card so hard it sliced an inch into a watermelon. It’s not necessarily about strength. It’s about physics. Velocity, angle of impact. That kind of thing.”
Not Even Bones Page 22
