Panther in the Hive (The Tasha Trilogy Book 1)

by Cole, Olivia

  “Wrong side! Other side!”

  Vette pauses and appraises the situation. The bride, who Vette is straddling, struggles upward and snaps at her prey’s thigh. The knife plunges into the other side of the neck once, then twice. The second stab yields a pop of what sounds like electricity, and after a moment the bride goes still. Vette remains where she is, bloody from the sprays of her unsuccessful attempts. She’s breathing hard, but Tasha can’t tell if she’s shaking or not. Tasha gives her time, looking around cautiously for more Minkers.

  Eventually Vette stands up. Tasha wipes her blade on her jeans, and Vette wipes hers on the wedding dress, leaving a vulgar red stripe across the train. They stare at it for a moment.

  “You just said the neck; you didn’t say which side of the neck.”

  Tasha shrugs. “I thought they were all on the right side. Mine have all been on the right.”

  “Okay, well you still didn’t say ‘The right side of the neck, stab them there.’”

  Tasha stares, then laughs a little. Vette looks pissed for a minute, staring crossly at the paring knife.

  “How come you get the big knife anyway?” Then Vette is laughing too and Tasha feels something like pleasure. It’s a feeling of recognition. It’s the feeling of a panther, raised in the zoo and surrounded by tigers, introduced to another panther. Home. Similarity. They laugh until it becomes awkward, and Tasha picks up her mostly-empty pack from where she had dropped it when the wedding party joined them.

  “Let’s go,” she says, still laughing. “Before the groomsmen show up.”

  They pass the L station that Tasha had walked by the previous day. Vette averts her eyes from the crowds of bodies on the steps and in the grass. Tasha sees her swallow hard once or twice. But she doesn’t comment. Instead she says,

  “What’s Predator? Does that have to do with MINK?”

  Tasha laughs loudly.

  “What? Girl, no. Predator is a movie!”

  “I’ve never heard of it.”

  “Not many people have. I don’t even know why I mentioned it.”

  “Indie film?”

  “Ha! No. It’s just really, really old.” She trips on a briefcase, abandoned, no doubt, when its owner realized there were more important things to be saved. Like his life. “Shit,” she says, looking back at its polished leather carcass.

  “How do you know about it then? Were you really into movies before all this?”

  “Yeah, kinda. My grandmother loved movies. Whenever I would visit her here when I was little we’d just watch movie after movie on a big old player. All stuff from when she was young. She said it was old even when she was young. That’s what got me interested in film.”

  “Did you write scripts and stuff…before?”

  “No,” Tasha shakes her head. “Film history. Just, like, researching old movies and, like, the impact they had on their time. And vice versa, ya know.”

  “Oh,” says Vette, actually sounding interested. “That sounds really cool. So you got a degree in that? I didn’t know they had degrees for that.”

  “They do. But I didn’t get my degree. I…uh, dropped out when my parents died.”

  Vette shrugs.

  “School ain’t shit. Sorry about your parents.”

  Tasha nods.

  They’re about halfway to the corner store that Ishmael had suggested. Tasha had passed it on the way toward Lakeshore the day before. “It looks like it’s just a liquor store,” Ishmael had said, “but they have food in there.” Tasha can see it now. The store—marked with a large digital sign: “Marvin’s”—is just a few yards down from the subway entrance. As they draw nearer, Vette slows her pace a little and gazes around.

  “I remember when this was all residential,” she says. This is like a handshake, Tasha thinks, but with words. Tasha has offered something. Now it’s Vette’s turn.

  They look down Marine Drive, the Volamu a faintly bluish trail disappearing over a slight bump in the terrain. On either side of it are the mini-skyscrapers that had crept up to claim the North Side. Most of them are businesses and restaurants and clubs, still-animated digital signs flashing up and down their edifices. Vette’s face is wistful and colored purple from the light of the club on the other side of Marvin’s.

  “There used to be grass over here, a kind of park. They started building when I was like eight, and we stopped coming here after that. Weird how much it’s changed.”

  Tasha doesn’t remember a Marine Drive that was absent of neon. She tries picturing it without the Volamu, without the dancing martini glasses animated on the signs. She can’t.

  “It looks like New York now,” Vette says, still staring. She tosses her hair out of her face prettily, something Tasha has always felt stupid doing. “You know, I would’ve been moving to New York. If it wasn’t for this shit. I got a job offer to handle some media company’s advertising campaigns. Came with a good package. I would’ve gotten MINK. Would’ve had the Chip.”

  Tasha opens her mouth to say something, but closes it again.

  “Everything happens for a reason, right?” she says. “Well, except this. I can’t see a reason for all this.”

  “Me neither,” says Tasha, although somewhere in her mind she can, a coming together of thoughts from Dinah and Ishmael, a suspicion she knows Leona would have some thoughts on. Tasha doesn’t say these things. Things are going well—don’t start being a cynic and ruining things, she tells herself.

  Vette looks at Tasha, and the purple fades from her face as they pass the club.

  “Who have you lost?” she asks abruptly and Tasha almost jumps.

  “You mean who is dead.”

  “Yes.”

  “My mom. My dad. My sister, kind of. Not dead. Just…not here. My friend. My friend is dead.”

  Friend. Not friends. She’d only had one, and she hadn’t even met her until after the Change.

  Vette studies her face.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, and the words are true. “This situation is made for losing. But you can stay with us, with the team. Ishmael likes you, I can tell, and you’ll be safer with us than alone.”

  Tasha hesitates, blushing a little at the mention of Ishmael. Just twenty minutes ago she had decided she needed to get away from the soccer stadium and its jersey-clad inhabitants as soon as possible, insisting that she worked better as a free agent, knowing that she needed to get to the South Side. She can still go, she thinks now. Maybe the team would come with her, or at least Vette and Ishmael. The three of them could watch each other’s backs and find this mystery person, Rio, together, once Tasha tells them about him. If she tells them. She doesn’t like the idea of planting a seed of hope only to have the tree grow into something ugly and gnarled. Lone wolf versus wolf pack. Which was better?

  “Maybe,” she says to Vette. “Maybe. I just…I don’t know.”

  Something nags at her, a skulking thing. She thinks of Dinah. Vette had said it herself: this is a situation made for losing. Tasha feels as if she might have lost enough already.

  “Think about it,” says Vette softly, and Tasha bends a little more inside. “For now, let’s get this food and get back to the stadium.”

  Tasha nods.

  They’re startled at first by the whining bell that is supposed to let the clerk know someone has entered the store. The second thing they notice is the heat. Outside it had been an even 70 degrees or so, but the store is a good 20 degrees warmer. Tasha wants to remove her hoodie but doesn’t. The third thing they notice is the dead cashier.

  “Check him out,” Vette says. She is pointing at the bullet holes in his chest, two of them. “They don’t use guns, do they?”

  “No,” Tasha says, “they’re too stupid to open doors, let alone use a gun. Somebody without a Chip did this. They must have taken the gun off a cop.”

  “Unless it was a cop.”

  Tasha finds herself shuddering a little. She nods.

  The register is open, the money gone. Pointless, Tasha think
s. Somebody shot this guy thinking, “Hey, the world is over! Time to cash in!” A lot of good money will do him now. A Minker doesn’t want your wallet, she thinks, it wants your heart. In its mouth.

  The women move on past the counter. Toward the back of the store they find food as Ishmael promised. Mostly canned vegetables and packets of things like ravioli and stew; some boxes of macaroni and cheese; thirty-second microwave pizzas; an endless selection of energy bars.

  They start shoveling food into their bags. Tasha feels like she’s robbing a bank. When she was alone on her solo missions to Jewel it felt more like regular grocery shopping. Quiet, cautious grocery shopping. But now one of them holds open the backpack and the other slides in can upon can, the scrape and clang of the containers against their shelves seeming too loud; almost rebellious. The Prada backpack fills up quickly and Tasha tightens its drawstrings, slinging it onto her shoulders. They’re more careful about what they put in the Nike bag. It’s larger, so a shitload of canned goods will be too difficult to carry, especially if they end up having to run. Tasha chooses a dozen packs of Ramen noodles. She doesn’t know if they have a way to boil water in the stadium, but she figures they can find a way. Or, if not, wait until they’re desperate and eat the little curls of noodles dry like potato chips. She adds instant oatmeal, the microwave pizzas, and a few loaves of bread with two jars of generic peanut butter. Vette sets the bag on the floor and forces in a box of cereal, then reconsiders and draws it out. She opens the box and removes the plastic bag housing the actual cereal and shoves that into the duffel bag instead. She does this twice more with two more boxes of Cheerios, then adds a bag of pretzels.

  “One more thing,” Vette says, smiling a small smile as she brandishes a handful of Snickers bars, “my favorite. I used to eat these for dinner when my mom would get home from work late. My first boyfriend in high school gave me six of them on our six-month anniversary. I wasn’t even mad. I ate them all on the same day.” She laughs to herself, stuffing the chocolate into the bag.

  She tests its weight. Tasha looks at her and Vette nods. Tasha nods back. She finds herself with the desire to talk too much and ends up saying too little.

  “All set?” Vette is half-picking up the bag.

  “One more thing. I’ve gotta use the bathroom.”

  “Want me to come?”

  Tasha hesitates. On one hand, she does want Vette to come. It reminds her of being with Leona, sisters sharing the bathroom, taking turns. But Tasha thinks of the striped pouch in her backpack, filled with mascara and foundation: her little bag of insecurity. It’s a private ritual, and Vette may not understand.

  “No, it’s okay. Watch the door. I’ll be out in a minute.”

  In the bathroom Tasha balances the Wusthof on the sink and stares in the mirror before unzipping the pouch. She tries to ignore her hair, which has assumed a life of its own, or part of one. Straightened strands are no longer the majority, from what she can tell: the light is dim, filtering in through a high tinted window above the toilet. She fishes her concealer out of the pouch, pauses, then dots it under her eyes over the dark cups of skin. As she goes about the ritual, it’s like donning armor. The mascara is last, as usual, and she stares herself in the eyes as she applies it. Finished, she bares her teeth in a pageant smile, convincing herself of something. Does she feel better? Safer? She’s not sure. Before the Change, she’d needed the make-up to hide from…what?

  With the mascara on, she didn’t look like herself, the orphan with a ghost sister. With eyes drawn bigger, perhaps the grief seems smaller. Where are Vette’s parents, she wonders. Dead? Maybe they can talk about it. Maybe she can hear about Ishmael’s mother and brothers that he’d mentioned. Even if their parents are all alive, Tasha knows they’ve lost people, their teammates. With something to discuss, this horrible common thing, maybe she can meet them eye-to-eye without hiding her face.

  It’s then that she remembers the toothbrush that made her want to make this little trip in the first place: the deodorant, the razor. She figures Vette will want these things too, or will when Tasha reminds her of them. She zips the make-up bag, stows it in her backpack with the canned food, then opens the door and follows the narrow hallway back to the storefront.

  “Hey, Vette, let’s check for a toothbrush or something while we’re here. We can get some for the guys too if you think—”

  She stops. There is the Nike bag, still zipped, but Vette is not beside it. Tasha looks around, but no Vette. The other woman isn’t very tall, but her head would still clear the shelves of the aisles. If she were standing up.

  Tasha puts the straps of the backpack on both shoulders and holds the Wusthof ready, walking sideways through the main aisle of the store and peering down each smaller aisle. Nothing in the aisle where she and Vette had found the food. Nothing in the next but liquor. Nothing in the next, or the next. Tasha hears a sound toward the front of the store and skips all the aisles in between, moving quickly and silently, her breath quickening. The very front aisle is marked Toiletries. In it, Vette is on the floor, dead. A man is on top of her. Tasha chokes on air and takes a staggering step forward, her mouth opening and closing like a carp.

  The Minker looks up, his mouth bloody. His glasses have stayed on his face, which are low on his nose, his eyes very blue and staring. The wrinkle between his eyes deepens as he sees Tasha, but he continues chewing.

  “Get off her, you fuck!” Her voice is loud, too loud, but she can’t control it. “Get the fuck away from her!”

  He shows no indication of having heard her. He holds himself stiffly above Vette’s prone form, like a rabid dog reluctant to give up its find. Tasha recognizes the wide-legged stance from the dogs she raised in Kentucky: territorial, angry. She strides over to where the two sprawl on the floor and kicks him in the chin as hard as she can, sending him arcing backward onto his back. His spectacles tumble to the floor, and she stomps on them spitefully. He barks as he struggles to turn over. She wishes she knew karate, jiu-jitsu, some masterful martial art to punish this creature in a more profound way than her Nike-clad foot can do on its own.

  He rises to his feet and Tasha backs quickly away as she realizes how tall he is—at least 6’5”. She’s going to have trouble reaching his neck, she knows. She glances down at Vette, fighting tears. Vette was at least two inches shorter than Tasha; no wonder she couldn’t kill the guy. Why didn’t she yell for her help? Maybe she did. Tasha wouldn’t have heard her.

  The Minker lumbers toward her, another bark rumbling in his throat. He steps on Vette’s lifeless hand as he moves toward Tasha, which enrages her. She wants to rush him, tackle him, bring him to the floor that way. She estimates he’s at least 220 pounds. Her 130 won’t do much against that.

  She skips backward, trying to keep an eye on him, and slips. She lands hard on her butt, but is back on her feet before he’s taken another step. Her ass hurts. But she has an idea.

  Turning her back on him, she races past the Nike bag to the back of the store where she and Vette had foraged. From the shelf she snatches a bottle of Crisco vegetable oil.

  “This’ll put you down, you fuck,” she snarls. He’s coming her way, still fairly slowly, Godzilla trying to keep up with his small, quick prey.

  She fumbles with the cap, gets it off. It has a seal.

  “These fucking things!” she cries.

  She’s forced to retreat to the other end of the aisle, as Godzilla has gotten a little close for comfort. She pokes the tip of the Wusthof through the waxed aluminum seal. Once broken, she jams two fingers in to widen the hole, plunging her fingers into the oil. Hastily wiping her hand on her jeans, she checks the big guy’s progress. He’s halfway down the aisle, glaring and growling. The blood around his mouth is an insult.

  Tasha upends the vegetable oil, dousing the tile floor like kerosene. Kerosene, Tasha thinks as she empties the bottle. If I had that I’d burn this fucking place to the ground. Having emptied the bottle, she discards it with a hollow clatter.


  “Come here, you big ugly motherfucker,” she yells, trying to amp herself up, hopping from foot to foot. “Can’t you see without your glasses? Come here!”

  He does as he is told, and the plan works well. He hulks right through the puddle of oil, slips, and crashes downward into an unpracticed split, too stupid to try to catch his balance. She thinks she hears a bodily rip of some kind, some ligament tearing audibly. She pictures the red hems inside his body coming apart at the seams as he slides down onto his back and flounders.

  Tasha remembers her slip at the McDonald’s—just yesterday, it seems as if a lifetime has passed since she’d met Chipped Chip—and bounds nimbly around the spreading pool of vegetable oil to dispatch her Godzilla. She leaps, feet and hands extended like a large ungainly cat, and lands directly on the big guy’s stomach. He gasps involuntarily as her sudden weight forces the air out of his body. The knife had stabbed him as she landed, but the red light in his neck is already blinking as it attempts to repair the torn ligaments that are keeping him from standing. She destroys the Chip with two quick slices, leaving him shuddering violently. The shaking is unlike the others she has killed. She scrambles to her feet and backs away, wary that he might explode or something. The wound in his stomach where the Wusthof had stabbed him during her landing hadn’t had time to close up before the Chip was put out of commission, and blood seeps through his argyle sweater and onto the oily floor. It’s Ralph Lauren, Tasha notices, and she feels half apologetic about ruining it. To her left she sees her little striped make-up bag. It fell out of the top of her backpack when she pounced on the Minker. She stares at it. The mascara is poking out, asking to be rescued. It calls to her.

  She turns her back on it and returns to Vette at the front of the store. She’s hard to look at, her throat open, bite marks marring her chest and neck like overzealous hickeys. Her mouth is almost closed but not quite; Tasha can see her front teeth, the slight gap between them. Tasha is grateful for the blank expression in the eyes as a rock seems to grow in her throat. She has seen movies where the tearful hero must lay a palm against his fallen comrade’s eyes to close them, a final romantic gesture of camaraderie and brotherhood. But Tasha can’t bring herself to touch her. She feels as empty as Vette looks: the warm, half-smiling Vette from a half-hour ago has become this silent bloody shell. But the orange cleats say it is her, the loose sandy hair. Tasha stares and stares, until her eyes start to burn. Vette is hard to look at, but Tasha stares. Her torn flesh, the blood that has painted the flesh of her neck and chest, is a stain bearing Tasha’s name.