Dead Man's Stitch

by Meg Collett

  I wiggled to make my boobs bounce against my bra.

  Luke’s jaw tightened. “We’re talking about this after.”

  He took hold of my waist, lifted me, and pinned me against the wall so I could wrap my legs around his waist. He was already hard and pressing against my core. I smiled at him.

  “Why are your boobs bigger?” He pushed up my bra and took my nipple into his mouth.

  I gasped as he flicked his tongue against me. “Ms. Brightly’s pies. I’m getting fat.”

  “You’re perfect,” he said. He turned his attention to my other breast.

  “You’re just saying that because you’re about to get some for the first time in two weeks.”

  He nipped at my swollen flesh, and I gasped again, bucking my hips against his hard length. He growled a warning. Luke always liked it when I fought back, and it was a game we sometimes played, but I sensed his edginess tonight. I could push him to the line, but we might not return from the abyss. It was a risk I was almost willing to take.

  I loved going to dark and depraved places with Luke.

  But not right then. I held still and let Luke run his hands over me, his mouth tasting and nipping and tonguing my skin. I rolled my hips against him, just to hear the hiss escape between his clenched teeth.

  He set me down to push my pants down beneath my ass. He spun me around so fast I had to slap my hands against the wall to keep from falling against it. When he grabbed me again and jerked my ass back against him, I felt his naked skin against mine, his length already sliding against me.

  “You should wear panties. It’s not ladylike,” he said, breath hot against my ear. He rolled his hips against me.

  I pressed back against the wall. “Fuck that.”

  “Oh, I will.”

  He slammed into me. I threw my head back, and his hand went to my throat, keeping my head craned back against his shoulder as he took me.

  I thought I lost my mind during those few quick, desperate moments with him inside me. I made noises I’d never made before. I begged and panted and came with a scream that forced Luke to clamp his hand over my mouth before we brought a stampede of guards to our classroom.

  When he finished, Luke held me up by leaning against my back, our combined weight keeping us propped against the wall. Sweat rolled down between my breasts. I groaned.

  Luke straightened off me. A chill swept across my exposed skin. I turned to him and started stuffing my boobs back into my bra.

  He frowned as he watched me, doing up his own pants with casual, practiced ease that made me want to roll my eyes. “They really are bigger.”

  My stomach dipped. “I told you. It’s the pies.”

  His frowned deepened. “You’re not getting fat, Ollie. If anything, you could use a few more pounds.”

  I tugged up my pants, wiggling and shimmying into them with more difficulty than a few weeks ago. I would need to tell him soon; I couldn’t hide this forever if I was already struggling with my clothes.

  Luke scratched the stubble along his jaw. “Now, back to what we were—”

  A knock sounded on the door, followed by a rattle of the doorknob. A second later, a key turned in it. The door swung open.

  Mr. Clint stepped in, saw us, and turned away. He cleared his throat. “Ah, Ollie, I have something you need to see.”

  “How the hell did you find us?” I snapped, hurrying to button my shirt. Luke’s hair was mussed, and his smirk would have made me blush if I’d been the blushing type.

  Mr. Clint kept his eyes averted. “Thad smelled you and told me where to look.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “Ew.”

  “Thad’s back?” Luke asked with a glance at me.

  “Sunny found him in the woods,” I supplied sourly. When Luke raised his brows at my tone, I added, “Didn’t ask. Didn’t want to know.”

  “I really haven’t missed that asshole.”

  “Calm down, Hulk.” I poked his chest before walking toward Mr. Clint. As I passed him and stepped out into the hall, I asked, “What’s so urgent you had to have Thad sniff me out?”

  “Something was left at the gate for you.”

  My head snapped toward him. I was already picturing a dead body when he handed me a simple letter. I flipped it over and slid my thumb beneath the seal.

  My skin dragged along the edge of the paper and tore. A tear of blood welled on the tip of my thumb.

  I put it in my mouth and sucked.

  “What is it?” Luke asked, joining Mr. Clint and me in the hall.

  “A letter,” I said around my thumb.

  “Let me.”

  Before I could protest, Luke had the letter opened the rest of the way and the single page pulled out. He unfolded it and scanned it. His expression hardened.

  “What is it?”

  He turned the page to me and Mr. Clint.

  It was a short letter, but it filled me with dread.

  Come to Port Lions. It’s about the pack. Hurry.

  - A.J.

  T W E L V E

  Ollie

  A red knit hat lay in the center of the street in Port Lions. Glass sparkled across the empty sidewalks from the busted-out shop windows. A door swung open in the wind, its bell dinging. The sun broke over the row of buildings on the main street and turned the sky a russet orange, similar to the color of a dying fire.

  My boots crunched over the glass as I climbed out of the truck. Sunny followed, her knives chiming against each other in her belt. Luke and Hatter stayed in the truck behind us.

  It was too quiet. The sky too bright. The daytime too nonthreatening. But my eyes kept catching on the red cap in the street. That had been on someone’s head not long ago.

  Glass cracked. I jerked my eyes toward the sound. At a narrow alley’s entrance, a tall shadow appeared, stretching long in the sunrise. I knew it was her before I saw her.

  Sibyl stepped out onto the street. She stood there, the ends of her hair shifting in the wind, her head cocked as she stared back at me. A slow smile spread across her perfect doll-like face. She wore worn jeans and a tight white top that made her skin appear even more like porcelain.

  “Isn’t that one of your pack?” Sunny whispered behind me.

  The truck’s door opened, and without looking, I held up my hand to stop Luke from coming out.

  I knew what this was.

  “Yes,” I said, my eyes locked on Sibyl.

  She ambled closer, her narrow hips swaying with each step as if the casual destruction around her was her personal runway.

  “What’s happening?” Luke called from the truck.

  “Tell them to stay back,” I told Sunny. Sibyl had no weapon that I saw. Why had she waited until dawn? Why not attack while we were on the road? Where the hell was A.J. and Squeak?

  “Why is she here?” Sunny asked quietly enough so only I heard.

  I met Sunny’s eyes briefly. “She’s challenging me as the queen.”

  My best friend’s mouth popped open. Her eyes darted between me and Sibyl and back again. “You’re going to fight her?”

  I nodded.

  Back on the street, Sibyl stopped. The heel of her heavy steel-toed boot stood atop the red cap.

  “Ollie,” Sunny hissed. “You can’t. The—”

  “I have to. Keep the others back.”

  Sunny studied me, her eyes wide with worry. I wanted to reassure her it would be fine; I wanted to reassure myself, but I kept quiet. Finally, she asked, “What about the rest of the pack?”

  “They won’t interfere.”

  I picked my way toward the roadblock, careful to avoid the larger slivers of glass. Back at the truck, I caught snippets of Sunny and Luke’s argument as she conveyed my message. “—her pack.”

  “—the hell are they here?”

  “Sibyl … challenging her.”

  Luke fell silent.

  His eyes scorched two holes into my back. I sensed him holding back like I could sense the rest of the pack’s eyes on me as I w
alked farther down the street. I pictured him tapping his fingers, his jaw clenched, his shoulders tense with the effort to stay still, to not call out, to let me walk away from him and into a fight he had no part of.

  My stomach fluttered, and I felt like I might be sick right there in the street.

  I wanted to stop walking. I wanted Luke to come up behind me and grab my arm and yell at me not to fight. I wanted to back away, get into the truck, and let them drive us back to the school.

  I wanted to be anywhere but on this street with this flutter in my belly.

  This flutter changed everything.

  I’d always relished the fight. But things had changed. I wasn’t just fighting for my life anymore.

  I stopped ten feet away from Sibyl. The wind shifted over my shoulder, blowing my scent to her, and her nostrils flared. The smile on her face grew wider, the angle of her cocked head tilting farther.

  “That’s so sweet,” she purred.

  I wanted to turn and run, but my feet were rooted to the cracked pavement.

  I glanced at the red cap beneath her boot.

  “I take it you know what this means,” she said.

  I dragged my gaze back to her opalescent eyes. My throat was dry with fear. Beneath the hatch-mark scars, my heart pounded. But my voice didn’t waver. “It means you want to die.”

  Sibyl’s smile brightened, revealing sharp white teeth. She laughed once, a staccato crack through the air, and her smile vanished just as quickly. She blinked at me. “You may call me a rogue,” she said, voice low, “if I never have to call you queen again.”

  I drew my silver knuckles, the ones I’d used to cut my father’s throat, and slid them onto my fingers. The slender blade hissed out.

  I looked up at Sibyl. “Is this about him?”

  She glanced down at my hand. Slowly, as if she had to think about it, she shook her head. “I hated him. No, I’m happy you killed him, even though I wish I had done it. I imagined cutting his throat so many times. You just beat me to it.”

  “We don’t have to be enemies, Sibyl. We could settle this without a fight. You could take the pack and leave Kodiak. You don’t have to start something today.”

  Please, I wanted to beg. Please, just walk away.

  Without realizing it, I had pressed a hand to my belly.

  It still blew my mind that one moment could change my entire life. Could change me so irrevocably.

  Was this how my mom had felt when she told me to hide in that closet and not come out until she returned?

  I’m so sorry I ever hated you.

  Sibyl was smiling at me. I dropped my hand from my belly.

  “It’s brave,” she told me, “to come out here in your state. To be willing to fight even if you offer words of peace.”

  “They’re more than just words. I mean them.”

  Sibyl lifted a shoulder. “But we know they’re just words. You’ll say them and then you’ll hunt me and my pack. You’ll track us down and kill us one by one. So, at the end of the day, they’re just words. And you and I? We’ve fought enough to know the only way to find true peace is to kill everyone who wants war.”

  She didn’t need to know how much I agreed with her. She didn’t need to know how similar we were. “Where’s A.J. and Squeak? They never went for supplies, did they?”

  “Oh, no.” Her eyes danced. “No, they didn’t. Poor A.J. and Squeak had other ideas about this pack that, well …” She paused, her eyes slipping toward the water’s edge where the ferry terminal stretched out over the body of water. “Well, let’s just say they had to be put down.”

  Cold dread washed over me. My eyes found them then. Hanging from the wharf. Their bodies limp in the breeze. Their feet swinging. Their heads lolled forward like they could have been asleep. They weren’t.

  I hadn’t known A.J. and Squeak long, but they had stood beside me against my father. They’d fought beside me when they didn’t have to. And to me, that meant a hell of a lot. That meant everything. They’d deserved better than a hanging. They were my friends. My pack.

  I inhaled long and slow, filling my lungs to their very depths. I held my breath. When I exhaled, I nodded, my eyes on the sunrise over Sibyl’s shoulder.

  “Okay,” I said simply, resolutely.

  “Woman to woman. That’s why I waited. We fight it out. To the death. Just blades.”

  My stomach dipped.

  What had my mother felt as she closed that closet door and walked away from me? Had it been something like this?

  I’m so scared. Were you scared? Because there’s so much more on the line now.

  Sibyl drew a thin stiletto blade. It gleamed like a ruby beneath the colors of the sunrise.

  I glanced behind me.

  Luke stood between Sunny and Hatter. He leaned forward as if only the wind held him back. He stared back at me, his jaw flexing wildly, and there was so much heat in his gaze that it threatened to completely thaw my icy resolve. I turned away before my legs betrayed me and I collapsed on the street.

  “He doesn’t know,” Sibyl whispered when I focused back on her.

  I remained silent, and her eyes danced.

  “Shame.”

  I expected her to leap at me. To surge forward like a wrecking force of nature. To slash with her blade. But she only walked forward, calmly closing the space between us as she lifted her blade, angling it down so she could strike with her fists.

  I took up the dance and circled away from her.

  There was no feinting or parrying blows. No pretty footwork like Luke and I practiced. No testing the waters of each other’s strengths and weaknesses. None of that.

  When Sibyl came for me, she came with all she had.

  I dodged her strikes, but it felt like I was running from the air. She was lightning fast, and the blows she landed, which she inevitably did, instantly spread surges of warmth through my body. She lashed out with her blade, her lips twisted into a thin line of concentration. I stumbled back, but the blade whisked across my cheek, narrowly missing my right eye.

  Another scar. Another mark.

  Twisting my hips, I flipped into a kick. I threw everything I had into it, all my strength, and when my boot connected solidly with her ribs, I stood back and waited for her to hit the deck. But she only smiled, though I’d felt the crack of her ribs.

  My original fear blossomed into terror.

  “You’re not the only one who doesn’t feel pain,” she said in her thick, throaty purr.

  I shivered.

  When my mother had lain in the snow, staring up at the sky as she died, what had she thought about me? Did she know she’d done enough to save me? Was she at peace because her sacrifice had been worth it? Or had she died afraid, terrified that Killian would find my hiding spot and kill me too?

  I hope you are at peace. I hope you know you did enough. I hope you know he didn’t find me. I hope you know me now.

  She came in low like a battering ram, and when we collided, the breath rattled out of my lungs in one long gasp. She threw me up against a shop’s wall. The back of my head cracked off the bricks. She grinned up at me. I brought my elbow down on her mouth.

  With a laugh, she backed away, swiping at her busted lips.

  Blood covering her teeth, she said, “It’s a superpower, isn’t it? To never hurt. To never know pain.”

  She didn’t know about my feeling pain after an aswang bit me. It was my first lucky break today. I doubted I would get many more.

  “We can walk away from this,” I said when I’d recovered my breath. My ribs pulsed with heat, and I wrapped an arm around my belly. My other arm hung loosely at my side, the silver knuckles hanging heavily from my fingers.

  My body sang with a tiredness so foreign I almost didn’t recognize it. I normally came alive during fights. Brandishing my blade and whip was when I felt most alive. Feeling the heat of an injury or drawing blood from my opponent was as good as sex—or it had been.

  One little flutter and everything h
ad changed.

  “You’re still trying to speak words of peace?” Sibyl shook her head, stalking to the side as I stepped away from the shop’s wall and back into the street.

  She let me readjust because she wanted to prolong the fight; she didn’t want my back literally against the wall. She wanted to relish this. I had once been the same way.

  “Not everything has to be a fight.”

  “Ollie.” She clucked her tongue in disapproval. “I’d heard such good things about you. Everyone said you were your father’s daughter. A real warrior. A killer.” All traces of her smile disappeared. “But you’re just weak. You’re just like all those humans who stare up at the night sky and marvel at the beauty of the stars. They’re too stupid to understand they’re just staring at dead things.”

  Her face tilted skyward as if she could see the stars through the dawn.

  In a blur of movement, I leaped forward, leading with my blade. The first cut sliced the tender muscle above her hip. She sagged forward, nearly falling. I twisted around her as she howled in fury, her stiletto going for my throat. Ducking back, I punched her ribs, then her kidneys. I dropped in low and brought my blade across the back of her knee, cutting through those thick, juicy tendons. She stumbled, her leg useless beneath her.

  I was bringing my blade up to drive it between her ribs and straight into a lung when she threw her weight into me.

  My focus was too narrow. I only saw the end of the fight, my final move. I wasn’t ready.

  I lost my balance, my arms pinwheeling. We hit the street together in a tangle of limbs and blades and snarls. With a twist of her hips, Sibyl was on top of me, her weight pressing me into the wet, cracked pavement. From the corner of my eye, I saw the red knit cap, its small tassel fluttering in the breeze.

  My face cracked to the other side and a blaze of heat flared across my cheek and mouth. My eyes watered, and the sight of Sibyl on top of me, raising her stiletto with her eyes on my belly, wavered.

  If my mother had been alive, would she have been proud of me? Would she have touched my belly and smiled? Would she have stood by my side and fought my battles with me and shared my victories and stared at Fear University and felt the same feeling of coming home?