True North

by L. E. Sterling

  “Kick-ass merc and professional dancer, among other things.” Jared teases out another wolfish smile.

  I roll my eyes again and take Jared’s hand. His skin is hot, his touch electric, all but drowning out my awareness as we leave behind the admiring diners and one very amused Alastair.

  There are more well-appointed passengers along the corridors. Women dripping with diamonds and men in dark tuxes, shiny shoes. As they pass by, they smile at us as though we’re a perfect young Upper Circle couple. The older couples smiles indulgently at us. They’re all fooled. I can feel it—the wild in the man beside me. But somewhere along the way I seem to have lost the sharp edge that has accompanied me since the day I realized what Jared Price was capable of. Either that, I reckon, or he’s a wolf who looks truly fine in sheep’s clothing.

  I know he won’t hurt me. Still, I find myself breathless when I realize he has walked me right to my cabin door. With deliberate movements, Jared takes my purse from my hands and fishes for the cabin door card.

  “I don’t want to know how you know which cabin I’m in.”

  The look he levels as he unlocks the door and holds it open for me could ruin a city. Jared casually tosses my handbag on the table by the door and locks us in.

  The already snug cabin gets a lot smaller.

  “Maybe I can open a porthole,” I offer, moving over to the wall with its round fish-eye openings.

  He beats me there. His hands cover mine and gently pull them away. With a deft yank, Jared has the window open. The sea blows in, smelling like a foreign land.

  I don’t understand the look he gives me. His eyes glitter as they meet mine, hypnotic and entrancing. I don’t think I imagine the ghost of pain that passes over his perfect features. He pauses, as though he doesn’t know whether to strangle me or kiss me. Then, taking me off guard, Jared gentles his fingers through my hair, pinning a lock behind my ear.

  “Wh-What are you doing here?” I stammer nervously.

  His eyes move over my skin as though they can read me inch by inch. “I told you I’d find you.”

  I give an unladylike snort. “I’m not sure you should admit to things like that, Jared.”

  He traces a finger down my upper arms and draws me closer. “Don’t,” he says. I can smell him, feel his exquisite heat wrap around me like a hug against the cold sea air. My senses and emotions are completely overwhelmed at seeing him again. “Don’t. Don’t ever disappear on me again,” he rasps.

  I stare at him, unable to comprehend the bleak look on his face.

  “Jared.” I gingerly place my fingers on his upper arms. He stares down at my hands.

  The situation shifts in an instant. He pulls my chin into the V of his fingers. Angling my head, he brings his mouth down on mine. The kiss is heavy, drugging, as though he is memorizing my atoms. I cling to him, his blond curls tangling in my fingers. My senses reel so hard I barely notice when my feet no longer touch the ground. I feel his arms around me, hot ropes that coil and squeeze. And suddenly I find myself stretched out on the cabin bed. He pulls my hands above my head and holds them there while he traces the scents over my body. When he finally returns to my face, he looks drugged, his eyelids heavy with pleasure. An expression halfway between a snarl and a smile.

  “Gods, I love your smell. Missed you. And that’s an understatement.”

  He drags his teeth over my tingling lips. My spine dissolves. I lose all sense of myself for several long minutes as I reach for his lips with my own, feel the fierce heat between us build. But then, his hand trapped on my stomach, he pulls apart from me.

  I gaze at him through half-closed lids, unable to think straight. All I know is I want more. More Jared, more of his gentle-fierce fingers on my back, my neck, his kisses on my collarbone—

  “Lu, honey, look at me. Look at me,” he insists with a little shake of my hip. I struggle to focus my eyes on his face. My stomach pools with how lucky I have been, accompanied by the dreadful knowledge that I might not have seen him ever again. Even though he’s right here before me, even though I’m in his arms, I experience a dart of sadness so swift and merciless I gasp. What if he hadn’t come after me? What if he hadn’t been able to find me?

  The thought is unfathomable.

  “Lucy, we need to talk.”

  His words splash over me like icy-cold water. I struggle to sit. “I suppose.”

  He rolls off me and grabs a hunk of his hair as though I’ve pushed him beyond his sanity, which, come to think of it, I might have. “For starters, can you tell me what it is you’re doing here with a stranger?” He tosses his head in the general direction of the door.

  I grit my teeth. “I told you exactly who Ali is. And you know what I’m doing here.”

  “Do I?” He rubs his forehead like it pains him. “I know he hasn’t hurt you. Your room is free of his scent. But that story you just told me…” Jared shakes his head. “I honestly don’t know whether to throttle you or lock you up.”

  The ship rocks. I hold my gaze steady on him. True Born, I remind myself. Different. Alien. Hunter.

  “How did you find me? What are you doing here?”

  “What do you think I’m doing here? I’m your bodyguard, Princess. I’m here to look after you.”

  I swallow against the pain in my throat at his words. “Does Storm know where you are? Where I am?”

  A cloud washes over his face. “I didn’t have time to get in touch with him. I will soon.”

  “Were you sent to fetch me back?” I clench my fists, waiting for my heart to break as Jared examines me.

  “No,” he finally says. My breath comes out in a whoosh, and only then do I realize that I’d been holding it in.

  My voice breaks. “Why, then?”

  “You know why.”

  “No.” I shake my head. “Why?”

  “I can’t.”

  “Can’t what?”

  Instead of answering, Jared crosses over to the porthole and looks out as though he could spy intruders in the ocean. “How did you get these digs, anyhow?”

  “Alastair is resourceful.”

  Jared snorts and turns to me. “He’s a crook.”

  “How do you know that?” The ship rocks again as he answers me with a look I’d as soon call snarky. Jared grumbles something under his breath. “Pardon?”

  He glares at me again as the ship rocks harder and the room sways. “I said I hate water.”

  “Oh. Right.” A True Born who shares genetic patterns with a panther? Of course he doesn’t like water. He’s a kitty cat. I chuckle, filing this away for later, and change the subject to something a little more neutral. “So where’s your cabin?”

  Apparently I’m not as clever as I think. Or I’m twice as funny. Through a chunk of his rumpled hair, Jared throws me a slightly condescending, very amused smile. He starts to strip off his suit jacket before setting to work unbuttoning his blindingly white shirt.

  “Well?” I say again when I realize he’s not going to answer me.

  Jared flips off his shoes and throws himself on the bed, lacing his fingers under his head. “Oh, I’m staying right here. Where I can keep an eye on you and your new buddy.”

  “Pardon?” I say again stupidly.

  “No need to get so excited, Lu,” Jared says with a wide grin.

  “No—no need? No!” I stomp my foot.

  “Yes,” he says contentedly. But his heavy-lidded eyes give him away.

  Dark and delicious thoughts skitter through my brain. I stuff them back into their box quick as I can. “I’d as soon sleep on the deck.”

  “Sure, we can sleep under the stars if you like.”

  “I said me.” I stomp my foot again for emphasis.

  “And I’m sure you meant it.” Jared smiles sweetly.

  My cheeks burn. But as I stare at the bare-chested True Born stretched out on my bed, I’ll admit: It’s hard to think of shivering under the stars when I’ve got Jared’s warm body to curl up to.

  The dec
ks are busy with early rising Upper Circlers. I reckon a number of them believe that fresh sea air and stimulus ward off the Plague. Superstitions are ripe, even among the rich and educated. The faint buzz of anxiety still hovers over most of them, though they’ll likely have been told repeatedly that stress brings it on faster. People spend most of their lives tying themselves up into pretzels to avoid catching sick, I muse.

  A man in white trousers and a loose-fit pink shirt pushes past me, florid and sweating. He’ll be one of the Upper Circle with a guru of some sort, a quack who’ll have unearthed for him the dung of beetles or some other noxious cure the Egyptians had for earaches a million years ago. As though it would protect him. Not so evolved, I think to myself.

  I stare around at the deck. The floating luxury ship is striking for its pristine white walls. No slogans written in jagged red paint to mar the facade of perfection. No kid gangs. No starving faces of the rabble or dead bodies. Not a single one of the Upper Circlers traveling on this ship will spare a passing thought for the hundreds of black-suited Lasters serving them flaming orange cocktails with fancy straws and bright-red cherries.

  The deck fills with expensively clad passengers in what our mother would call “morning leisurewear.” Tacky, my mother would proclaim. According to her, no one should be caught wearing exercise gear outside of one’s closest circles. I’d heard those ladies once say there were only two reasons to get all hot and sweaty: the first is to land a rich husband. The second, and only to keep the rich husband, is to ward off the Plague.

  “You certainly don’t need to parade your Plague fears,” she’d schooled Margot and me.

  “There you are, Princess.”

  Jared has decided to play up the leisure role this morning. In his red T-shirt and sandals, his hair a nest of golden curls and his skin oozing vitality, he stands out from the other wan passengers on deck.

  “As if you didn’t know.” I roll my eyes at him.

  I’d come to the deck not just for the benefits of the sea air but because as Jared slept, arm draped over me all too comfortably, I’d had some time to think things through.

  How had he managed to find me on a ship? How had he known where my cabin was, where I was?

  “Where’s the tracking device?” I say without preamble.

  He cocks his head at me as though I’ve jumped into a foreign tongue.

  “Well?” I push at his chest. “My arm?” I hold out the soft white flesh of my inner arm, then rotate it to produce my shoulder. “Here?”

  Jared takes my arm in a gentle grip and examines the skin with rapt attention. I fight waves of pleasure. “Well, that’s an interesting idea. I wish I’d thought of it. Save me a world of trouble,” he murmurs. He runs his nose against the softness, darting his lips closed every few inches in a burning kiss that I feel to my toes.

  “Stop it.” I try to pull away, but I reckon I don’t try very hard. My arm stays in his grip as his eyes burn into mine.

  “You’re telling me,” he murmurs between kisses, “you think I tagged you?”

  “You. Storm. No difference.”

  “I’m insulted by your lack of faith in my abilities, Princess.”

  It’s not like him to lie even if it would suit him. Sensing my confusion, he taps his head. “Only made sense. Also I bribed a porter to tell me what cabin was yours. Told him I was your fiancé coming to surprise you.”

  “He bought it?’

  “Apparently he’s a bit of a sucker for romantic tales.”

  I look out at the sea, the irregular, choppy water somehow soothing. “I don’t get you.”

  “Get what?”

  “This.” I indicate the arm he’s currently running his fingers up and down.

  “Oh. You mean this?” He traces his fingers up to my neck, threading deliciously through my hair.

  “I can’t handle this teasing, Jared.”

  His eyes, blue rimmed with green, bore into mine. His fingers still in my hair. “I’m not teasing.”

  “What about Storm?” I return with a stubborn tilt to my chin.

  Jared looks over his shoulder. “What about him?”

  “What are you planning to do with me now that you’ve tracked me here?”

  For the first time since I’ve known him, Jared looks lost. He glances down at his hands as though he doesn’t understand why they don’t have a bloody limb in them. “I don’t know,” he tells me honestly.

  It’s enough for now—this is truth enough.

  “Be nice to Alastair.” I sniff. I take the time to gently untangle myself from Jared’s hands, though it causes me physical pain to do so, before heading to the dining room for the breakfast buffet.

  Alastair is draped in the lounger to my left. I turn to my companion, shading my eyes from the bright white sea air. “Have you seen a Splicer clinic onboard?”

  Alastair squints into the brightness as he watches the Upper Circle socialites stroll past. I’ve noticed that crinkles appear like outspread wings beside his eyes when he smiles or squints. They make him look older, more mysterious. I’ve also noticed that he looks at the women who shamelessly parade before my two companions—Alastair in the lounger to my left and Jared to my right—but he doesn’t really seem interested.

  Except when he looks at me.

  “You bet,” Alastair drawls. “A little more rudimentary than you’re used to, I’m guessing.”

  “How can you know what I’m used to?” I argue.

  Alastair just laughs and throws up his little pebble, catches it. “Your family put the ‘upper’ in ‘Upper Circle,’ didn’t they?”

  Jared snorts on the other side of me but otherwise remains silent.

  “So what kind of clinic is it, then?”

  “The emergency kind.” Alastair sobers.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means,” breaks in Jared, “when one of these fat cats falls down in a stupor, they can Splice some emergency DNA into ’im, but it’s unlikely to be a good patch. The body likely won’t take to it.”

  “Why? What’s in it?”

  Jared curls his hands behind his head and looks more relaxed than I’ve seen him in hours. “Synthetic DNA. It’s like getting a blood transfusion. Only with synthetic DNA you never know if the host body will think it’s the wrong ‘type.’”

  “They can’t do tests?” I ask, but of course, I know the answer to that question. They will do tests, but Splicing is unpredictable at the best of times.

  “Why are you so curious about this?”

  I shrug and turn my attention back to the people going by. Alastair may not be able to guess why I would be interested, but I reckon Jared knows. I spy the man in white again, his hair falling to his shoulders in soft, dark folds, streaked with white. He’s sweating profusely in his white chinos and dress shirt and is obviously uncomfortable. He gets closer, just ten feet away. I watch as he stumbles, rights himself. No one else seems to have noticed. Not even the merc in reflective sunglasses trailing him.

  Jared has. He glances over at me, a question in his eyes, and I nod. This one will not last the voyage across the endless blue.

  To take my mind off the man’s impending doom, I glance up at the gauzy white folding overtop the dark-blue waters.

  “It doesn’t rain out here,” I murmur.

  “Pardon?” says Alastair, catching a pebble in his palm.

  “Rain,” I say again, lifting my voice to be heard over the ocean wind. “It’s always raining in Dominion.”

  Alastair shoots me a funny look. “Aren’t you Uppermost? Didn’t your parents ever take you anywhere?”

  How could I explain a life spent in our prisonlike existence? Grayguard Girls didn’t just up and leave on the frequent missions our father was sent on. Grayguard Girls stayed at home and got good grades so they could land a husband befitting their rank.

  Besides, thanks to the Plague, travel has become the kind of risk that needs to be weighed. And between mercs and Splicing, who was rich enough to
bring their entire family on trips?

  Although, to be fair, money was not our family’s excuse.

  The breeze picks up, and even as I take a deep breath of fresh sea air—the freshest I’ve ever drawn—my eyes bump against the sky. It’s brighter out here on the endless ocean. Almost blue.

  A funny strangled sound comes from nearby. I look over to where I’d last seen the man in white. Jared has already jumped up. I look around Jared’s limb and see the familiar merc. He strips off his glasses, revealing the most piercing blue eyes against dark skin as he leans over the man in white.

  “Can someone call the Splicer Clinic onboard?” the man says calmly.

  None of the Upper Circle, gathering at a safe distance from the man like carrion birds, moves a muscle.

  “How do I do it?” I say, pushing myself forward.

  The merc nods toward a bright-red phone tucked discreetly in an alcove set in a wall. It has a receiver like a barbell, like something out of a museum. I fumble with its spiral cord and press down on the receiver until static comes on the line.

  “Hello?” I call tentatively. “Hello—anyone there?” The man in white remains a motionless heap while his merc fumbles with the open collar of the white shirt.

  “Yes, Miss,” a crackling metallic voice finally answers. I sag in relief.

  “There’s a man here. Needs immediate medical attention. Splicing.”

  “Yes, Miss,” the tinny voice says. “Stand by.”

  I replace the phone and stare into the icy eyes of the merc. “They’re coming.”

  Jared cocks his head to the side as though hearing something approaching. Soon I hear them, too, the rapid clomp of boots on the wooden floors of the deck. The merc’s forehead shifts up in furrows of flesh, giving him an oddly hopeful appearance. But we both know—his eyes tell me he knows already—that even with a good Splice, the man in white is likely doomed.

  12

  Christopher E.J. Turner is a man who doesn’t forget debts.

  His is the presidential suite for the duration of the voyage—or his life, whichever comes to an end first. All around him is the kind of ornate luxury that I’ve grown up with. But here, surrounding the doomed man in white, the room’s luxuries take on the character of an overstuffed mausoleum. There’s a smallish bedside table edged in gilt. Its surface is cluttered with pretty junk: an antique clock, a vase of freshly cut flowers, a tissue-box cover made of gold. Small painted vases, which I recognize as some very expensive pieces, fine gold-edged china, priceless figurines. My mother, I think to myself without humor, would love this.