by Bonds (epub)
He tapped his finger on the plastic of the giant shampoo ad decorating one of the stop’s kiosks and Daisy swore he left imprints. Like the tip of his finger either put so much pressure on the plastic case it caved, or he was, somehow, melting it.
He didn’t say anything. He just stared into the parking lot, licking his lips.
She stood up. She didn’t will her body to do it, her legs just stood up on their own. Her feet planted. Her back tensed.
If she needed to run, she could run.
Daisy couldn’t name the man’s stench. Couldn’t say, “Oh, yeah, that’s burning rotten eggs,” or “A firecracker dipped in gasoline,” because she didn’t know for sure what those smells were. Her imagination said Oh, you know and It doesn’t matter. It gets the point across.
But she was seventeen and she’d never actually smelled a gas-dipped firecracker. She did, though, smell this man. And she smelled danger.
Heat curled through the bus stop, driven by the passing cars and trucks. The overhead shades did their jobs in a few spots along the benches, but focused the heat in others. One section of the retaining wall between the stop and the mall gave off a particularly strong wave of heat-stink. Daisy moved to the side, closer to the late afternoon glare thrown by the concrete walk outside the shelter. From here, she could dash into the mall parking lot if she needed to.
An altercation could lead to cop harassment, something she’d had enough of since moving with her mom to San Diego.
A big truck grumbled by and the bus stop shelter filled with cough-inducing diesel fumes. The foul-smelling homeless guy shifted his weight. His clothes crinkled, his belt rustling, and he stepped out of the shelter. Toward the family in the parking lot. The isolated mom with her kids who was, right now, maneuvering the stroller between large cars that, more often than not, blocked any view of her from both the mall and the road.
The man licked his lips again.
A new hunger rolled off him. Not the stomach-growling hunger Daisy had smelled from the woman and her kids but a soul-deep, I-am-my-hunger, crazy person need. The kind of obsessive hunger that wasn’t necessarily for food, or for learning, or for anything normal. The guy had the hot, burning air of compulsion hanging around him like a cloud of puke-yellow mist.
Daisy had never been this close to someone obviously, certifiably insane. She’d seen true crazies before, both here in America and also at home, in Australia. One woman had danced up and down the sidewalk outside the grocery store, a six-inch-long steak knife in her hand as she yelled at invisible demons.
The store manager had called the cops.
Now Daisy wondered if this guy also had a knife.
But cops would notice her, as well. Probably ask questions about her life.
For Daisy, new fears drifted on the new American air, and not all from her mother or herself. Mostly from people like the hungry woman and the weird, scary homeless guy. Metallic fears. Anxieties that smelled like vinegar and eggs. Sour smells. Fears that didn’t stay background at all.
Fears and rage and hunger.
The homeless guy walked toward the break in the retaining wall and the path leading into the mall parking lot. The rubber of his ratty old shoes made little sucking noises with each step off the hot concrete. He hooked his thumbs around his belt and his head bobbed in rhythm with his steps.
He was going to do something to the mom and her kids. His intent wafted off him with his stink and vibrated from the set of his muscles. Violence was coming.
If she yelled at him, he’d be distracted. He might forget about the mom. Maybe they’d make it to the mall. Maybe they’d be safe. But all that violence would likely turn toward Daisy.
Daisy’s stomach flip-flopped. The sun heated up everything, her mind included, and she didn’t know what to do.
“Hey!” she yelled. Her mind hadn’t made its decision, but some part of her had. A part that wasn’t letting two little kids get hurt.
The homeless guy’s head swiveled. His nose twitched. He glanced at Daisy, then at the family as they walked away. When his gaze returned to Daisy, his head lowered. He stared.
He looked doughy and puffy, like he drank too much. He wasn’t taller than Daisy, but he was broad shouldered. The sun’s glare made his eyes look flat and she couldn’t tell their color. Though, if she squinted, she saw what might have been a flash of red.
Because that makes sense.
Again, the thought of killer cyborgs flitted through her mind.
Then he smiled.
His teeth glowed. They glowed. All sparkly and nasty like they had a million little sparklers and firecrackers in their enamel.
Fast, he shuffled across the concrete. Before she drew a new breath, he stopped directly in front of her.
Up close, he smelled even worse. The battery acid notes to his stench made Daisy’s eyes burn. She coughed.
The hunger wafting off the man changed to flat-out menace. Daisy inhaled but her lungs wouldn’t let out the air. Her lungs wouldn’t do anything.
The machine-harsh ringtone of Daisy’s cell phone burst through the bus shelter. She’d forgotten that she’d set it loud, so she’d hear it in the mall if her mom called. Now it blared through all the weirdness wafting off the man.
Her need to run flicked out into the front spaces of her brain like someone had pulled a filthy shroud off her mind.
The phone vibrated against her hipbone, where she carried it in her front pocket. A shiver worked through her body, breaking more of the crazy man’s spell.
The man stepped back. Daisy dug her phone out of her pocket and pressed answer, never taking her gaze off the creepy guy. “Hello?”
A voice Daisy had never heard before flowed across the connection. The woman speaking to her sounded authoritative, as opposed to the crazy she felt from the homeless guy.
But what struck Daisy most—and pulled at those deep parts of brain controlling how her body moved—was that the woman sounded like she understood what was happening right now, in the bus shelter.
As if, somehow, the woman speaking through Daisy’s phone saw what was about to happen.
And she knew what Daisy needed to do.
“Run,” the woman ordered. “Now!”
3
Daisy flung herself backward and flopped over the bench. Her leg smacked against metal supports and pain flared through her knee. “Shit!” she groaned.
But her boots hit the concrete and her legs worked the way they were supposed to. Daisy bolted around the bus shelter’s flat wall of shampoo advertising and sprinted down the street, toward the stoplight on the corner.
The phone jostled in her hand, but she kept it—and the woman’s voice—next to her ear. “Who are you?” She didn’t recognize the woman’s voice. As far as Daisy knew, she’d just been called by an angel.
The woman answered with a new question. “Who is chasing you?”
“Some guy who smells like acid.” How did some random woman get her cell phone number?
What sounded like a sharp inhale burst across the connection. “He’s a Burner. Do not let him touch you, Daisy. If he gets his hands on you, he’ll do much worse than make your eyes tear-up from his smell.”
Daisy already figured that much out. “What the hell is a Burner?”
“A chaos ghoul.”
Daisy stopped running. Stopped still right there on the sidewalk outside the bus stop even though a crazy, death-smelling homeless guy chased her. “Wait, what?” The woman said ghoul, like ghoul was a real thing.
“Damn it, run!” the woman shouted.
Daisy took off again, her feet pumping, and didn’t look over her shoulder. Because if the homeless guy really, truly was a ghoul, she didn’t want to see it in his eyes.
But she had already. Which was why she’d yelled at him. To keep him away from those kids.
But ghouls were bullshit, like cyborgs and zombies.
The woman who called her—who must be watching—must be just as crazy as the guy. Because this was bullshit.
Daisy glanced around as she ran. No one obvious. No one nearby. No places to watch from roofs, either. What the hell was going on?
“A Burner will smell your heritage even though you are not yet active.” The woman grunted. “You had to yell at him, didn’t you? He would have left you alone but no, Daisy, you’re not one to let someone else suffer, are you?”
“You make it sound like it’s a bad thing.” Daisy still wasn’t going to look over her shoulder, though she smelled him again.
He must be getting close.
“He’s not going to stop until he sinks his teeth into your flesh! They never do. You will be very important in the future and my fate is to make sure you survive long enough to do your damned job!” The woman yelled her last few words.
This time, Daisy glanced over her shoulder. The guy wasn’t running, but he obviously focused on her and only her, not dodging other pedestrians, or paying any attention at all to bikes or benches or opening doors.
“Listen to me, Daisy. I cannot read his kind. All I see is that you are in danger and that you must run!”
Daisy dodged a waste bin and ran toward an older woman walking her midsized, beige dog. “Who the fuck are you?” she yelled into the phone.
The old lady behind Daisy on the sidewalk made a face when she overheard the not-so-nice words flowing out of Daisy’s mouth.
The dog had floppy ears and an easy wag to his tail, and Daisy automatically smiled and internally wished him the subconscious good dog she always did when meeting a new animal.
She wasn’t expecting what happened next.
The dog twirled around, facing away from her, and lunged out into the center of the sidewalk. A loud, vicious growl rolled between bared teeth and the fur on his neck stood up. But he wasn’t growling at Daisy. He growled at the crazy guy chasing her up the street.
“Cross the road. Now.” The woman on the phone sounded young, but in an old kind of way. As if she probably looked seventeen, like Daisy, but most definitely wasn’t. Why did the woman sound not-American? A faint accent highlighted her words, but Daisy couldn’t place it. It sounded mashed-up, sort of like her mom’s not-American but no-longer-Australian accent. Except the mystery woman sounded snotty.
And commanding.
A concrete divider separated the road’s traffic and Daisy needed to run six lanes total, three each direction. Too many cars whizzed by to make it across safely. She’d get hit. “I need to go to the corner.”
Behind her, the homeless guy pulled up short, his hands out. “Dog!” The pitch of his voice edged up like he thought the dog was some sort of evil supernatural being. Like it was his role to make sure everyone understood that “dog” meant “demon.”
Thank you, Daisy thought at the dog, knowing damned well that her good wishes didn’t make a difference. But she’d always had a rapport with animals, and she always thanked them, even if they didn’t know it.
From her phone: “You need to cross the road.”
“Not with this traffic.” An eighteen wheeler rushed by and for a second, the rumble of its tires and engine drowned out all other sounds.
If the woman was watching, she’d know Daisy couldn’t cross. Not here, without a light. “You bettah tell me who the fuck you are! Or I’m hanging up. Got it?” Damn it, Daisy worked hard to rein in her foreignness. To not sound as different as she looked. But she could only concentrate on so many issues at once.
“Listen to me, Daisy Reynolds. The Burner cannot touch you.”
How did this weirdly foreign woman know her name?
The volume of the woman’s voice increased. “Cross the road! Now!”
Daisy jumped the curb and her feet hit the hot asphalt between two parked SUVs. She ducked carefully out, looking at the traffic. Three cars screamed from one direction, but if she ran, she’d make the center median. She’d have to wait there until the traffic flow on the other side thinned.
Behind her, the weird man yelled at the woman with the dog. The little animal growled and snapped.
Every day of her life, Daisy thanked the universe for making dogs, and today was no different.
A rickety old truck rolled by and Daisy dashed out into the street, running as fast as she could, and snagged a street sign in the median. She swung around it, slowing herself, as car after car flew by on the other side of the road.
She was out in the open now, and the homeless guy yelled something she couldn’t hear. He jammed his fingers in the air like he was trying to pop bubbles floating around his head.
Something rustled on the other end of the call. The woman must have moved.
Daisy’s fingers tightened around her phone. What was she doing? Why did she listen to this woman? What if this woman and the homeless guy were working together?
“I am not like him.” More mind reading from the woman. “I am not like you, either. You are Mutatae, Daisy. A Shifter. The man chasing you is Ambustae. A Burner.”
Shifter? Her mom used to read her fairytales about shapeshifters. But that was more bullshit, just like killer cyborgs.
Another noise like the woman rubbed up against something floated through the phone. “That need of yours to make sure you do right? To be good? You must cross the road and offer aid.”
Daisy’s breath stopped half way into her lungs. Her stomach pushed upward, into her chest. The woman hadn’t called because Daisy would be “important in the future.” She called because she knew Daisy would never knowingly let someone suffer.
And knew that a seventeen-year-old in a weird-as-fuck situation was probably weirded-out enough to do as she fucking commanded.
The traffic spread out. Behind her, the homeless guy dashed into the road.
“Run now, Daisy Reynolds. I fear that Burner is about to draw the attention of people who will interfere in matters they cannot and a good man—and his family—is about to suffer if you do not listen to me. He needs your help. Your help. You must, this one time, do what you were meant to do.”
Again, Daisy’s feet moved on their own. They slid over the concrete of the median and into the road. The sun’s heat baked down on the black waves of Daisy’s hair, and up through the ground under her boots. She smelled the world once more—the stink of bad fried food mingled with the wafting drafts of department store perfumes from the mall on the other side of the road. The chemical-medical odors of the clinic in the strip mall in front of her. All the exhaust from the cars and buses.
And the scary, weird smell of burning acid coming off the homeless guy.
When she glanced back, looking at the creepy douchebag and not where she was running, she saw it again. Red eyes.
Her heart almost pounded out of her chest.
Maybe he really was the ghoul the woman said he was.
He closed in and hit the median just as she darted into oncoming traffic. Close enough that if he grabbed for her, he’d get a tight grip around her elbow for sure. And she wouldn’t get away.
She had a ghoul after her. What was happening might be bullshit but the homeless guy smelled different. Smelled unreal and very, very dangerous.
“Show me I made the right decision calling you, Daisy.” That’s all the woman said. Just spoke words meant to convey do it right.
Because people stink. And people do weird shit. And there’s a good man across the street who needed help as much as Daisy did.
She disconnected the call. She should turn around as she tucked her phone into her pocket. Look at the traffic. But a deep little voice told her not to turn her back on the man the woman on the phone had called a “Burner.” She saw it in the strange set of his shoulders. He twisted his neck to the side in a way that should have popped vertebrae. He was
about to snap his jaws at her like a confused coyote and Daisy knew you should never turn your back on a crazed animal.
Brakes screeched.
Daisy hadn’t been looking. She should have been looking.
The fender of the big black car hit her knee, the one she’d knocked against the bus shelter bench. Something snapped.
Something snapped bad.
And when Daisy Reynolds’s head slammed against the blisteringly hot surface of the road, her bad had only just begun.
4
Metal hit metal. People yelled. The dog on the other side of the road barked. The sun blazed and Daisy fell over because she didn’t look before running into traffic.
Her phone rang again.
Her entire body picked up the vibration. The stupid thing screamed its ring tone from under the denim of her jeans but mostly she heard her own blood pumping in her skull. It sloshed around in there, like her brain sloshed when her head bounced on the pavement.
A car door slammed. More yelling. Shadows fell over Daisy’s face and she smelled a lot of fear. Anger, too. And confusion.
Then the sun backlit some huge guy who wasn’t the homeless man. Or she hoped wasn’t the homeless man. But the homeless man wasn’t as big. Nor did he smell sterile and antibiotic-y like a medical clinic.
The phone stopped buzzing against her hip bone, where it waited in her pocket.
Daisy’s brain sloshed and now a huge man with black hair and strange hazel eyes with green sunbursts in the center hunched over her as he yelled at a lot of other people.
He wasn’t the vicious homeless guy, thank God. But he still smelled different.
He should smell like a person.
And Daisy’s basketball-dunked brain stuttered out He’s weird too. He’s another kind of weird!
“Miss, can you hear me?” The huge man with the strange eyes was damn fine-looking, with a nicely-shaped, square jaw and good, strong Spanish features. Even if he was obviously daddy-aged.
