by eden Hudson
I snorted. “You’re damn right it was. I’m a lover, not a fighter. I mean, look at this face. Besides, I keep too busy for such a rigorous hobby.”
“I’m sorry, by the way,” she said. “I let my emotions affect my judgment. I blamed the past on you instead of the people it belonged to. It just brought a lot back, seeing you do that to the guard.”
I waited.
When she didn’t go on, I said, “Now would be the appropriate time to expound upon what you meant by ‘the past.’ You know, if you wanted me to take your apology seriously and believe that you’ve learned your lesson and grown as a person.”
“I’m not sure I have,” she said. “Because here I am doing it again.”
“Doubting me? Shame on you.”
She shook her head. “Shutting Nick out of a major event in my life. Trying to protect him from it, just like I did back then.”
***
“I was nineteen when I got that internship with the Enforcers,” Carina said. “Twelve years ago. You would’ve been…seventeen or eighteen?”
“Thereabouts,” I agreed. Not that being vague mattered, considering she’d been keeping close enough track of my file to know that I was currently one hundred and sixty-eight days away from celebrating my thirtieth birthday.
“The Enforcers had six missing persons, three bodies, and one check-in at a five-star hotel under an alias Lorne Van Zandt was known to use, but Lorne Van Zandt had died two years earlier.”
“Talk about a conundrum,” I said.
Carina gave a small conciliatory nod to that. “I was put in with the task force. Back then it wasn’t like it is now, where a task force is something they say they’re putting together, but they’re actually just continuing regular law enforcement and investigative work. The Enforcers had resources back then. This was the first multiple murder case since your father was incarcerated. I was allowed to shadow the lead Enforcer—probably entirely because of who my parents were, but I didn’t care because I’d become convinced that I could see a link the rest of the task force couldn’t or wouldn’t see.”
Abruptly, Carina seemed to realize how into her own story she was getting. She took a mental step away from it before going on.
“We knew what the killer was looking for—her victim type, your father’s type. Young, naïve social butterflies. Party girls in the eighteen to twenty-five age range.”
“That was actually Harley’s type,” I said. “She just thought it was my father’s because that was the kind of person she was when he took her.” His type had been sincere and beautiful, and if they happened to party, well, it just made them that much easier to acquire.
“In any case, we had narrowed it down to that, and I convinced the lead on the task force to use me as bait,” Carina said.
“You handled him.”
“I told you, it’s not always a conscious decision. When I really want something, I can usually get it. I really wanted this killer to pay.”
“Why?”
Carina-pause, this one nowhere near as long as the last. “Because when someone does something like that to another human or mutant—or even an animal—they should be held accountable. They shouldn’t be allowed to just keep doing it. And someone who is capable of doing it once—of enjoying it—won’t stop at just one.”
The “enjoying it” qualification was a nice way to put mental distance between her old man and mine. I filed that away for later.
“So what happened?” I asked. “Harley came up to you in a bar and you just knew?”
“That was where my hunch came in. Nobody would consider that your father had had an accomplice. I’d been operating on that assumption, but when I saw her, I realized that she was incredibly close to fitting the age-modified description of the vic who’d made the phone call to her mom. Obviously, though, I didn’t know for sure. Not until we were leaving through the alley and she stuck that pin in my throat.”
“What’d she use?” I asked. “To pick you up.”
“She asked me back to her place for drinks and made an allusion to illegal substances.”
I wrinkled my nose. “That sounds like a city enforcer’s report. What’d she really say?”
At least a mile of dark jungle passed us by before Carina spoke up again. “She made some small talk at first, then she told me, ‘I hate places like this. We could drink for free back at my suite and we’d be able to hear ourselves think. What do you say?’”
“Absolutely artless,” I said.
“I wasn’t exactly making it hard for her. I could kind of…feel that she was different.”
“From what?”
“Humans, mutants, domesticated pets—take your pick. It wasn’t like talking to a person. It was like talking to some kind of clever reptilian predator that had taught itself to act like a person.”
That stock photo the news blogs and infograms use whenever they discuss the advanced komodo virus popped into my head. “But your hunch said she was the one, so you played easy to get and pretended not to notice.”
Carina nodded. “And then she got me.”
“But you got her back, right? The Enforcers fell upon her just like the bullwolves the news blogs compared them to.”
“Not as fast as the news blogs made it sound, though,” Carina said. “I hadn’t told Nick or my father about the operation, just that I was going to be working late with the task force the next week or so. The team stayed on call all week. I went out each night, skinpatch mic on my temporal bone so I could give the team directions on where to converge if the killer smashed my wristpiece. We all assumed that was the safest bet because those skinpatches are invisible. Turns out she didn’t need to see it. She stopped me before I had a chance to use it.”
“The ol’ throat pin.” It was the kind of adaptation my father would have pulled if he’d still been free when skinpatch technology was perfected. Hell, maybe he had seen the tech coming and started the adaptation ahead of time. That would explain them finding one of his women with the puncture.
“It took the team sixteen hours to find me based on the background noises they could isolate.” Carina smiled. “Thank God she didn’t have access to a soundproof room or I wouldn’t be driving this car. It felt like it took them sixteen years to get to me, but compared to her other victims—and his—I got off easy.” She shot me a smile. “A few more scars aren’t anything to somebody with a face like mine.”
I grinned. “You’ve really got a way with understatement.” But I was thinking of Carmelita’s huge, kind eyes staring off into nothingness while the lifeblood ran out of the hole in her head. “I bet Nickie-boy was peeee-yissed when they found you. Your father, too.”
“Dad was relieved I survived, and proud of me for taking the initiative. Nick…” Carina shook her head. “If I’d told him beforehand, he would’ve wanted to be in on the sting, but he doesn’t have great control over his emotions.”
“Called it!” I shouted triumphantly. “On the plane, I called it. Serious lack of control. People don’t change, they just get taller.”
“However poorly you want to word it,” Carina said, “I would’ve spent more time worrying about him than my job, and he would’ve spent more time trying to protect me than himself.”
“Either he hasn’t seen your trick with the throwing knives and the shooting people with their own rifles or he’s too stupid to appreciate what it means.”
She turned a glare the color of swamp ice at midnight on me. “Nick’s not stupid. Just protective.”
“Really? Because he sounds stupid.”
“He’s not,” she snapped.
“The way you’re getting all emotional and insistent about this makes me think you’re used to defending him to people who think he’s stupid.”
Carina’s grip tightened on the wheel until I could hear the leather creak.
“Look, you don’t have to be embarrassed,” I said. “I’m sure he’s well-hung. Retards usually are.”
The muscle in
her good jaw started to tick. Now I was stepping on her last nerve for sure. Unfortunately, along with her rage, the Fedra was gaining momentum, and the road just kept zigging and zagging off at unpredictable angles.
“Take it easy,” I said, grabbing the handle over the window. “No need to wrap us around a tree just because your boyfriend’s a dummy.”
Dense vegetation whooshed by on either side of us, thick enough to hide even the largest oncas and hogzillas. Carina was still accelerating. If something ran out in front of us, she would never get the Fedra stopped in time.
“Slow down!” I stood on an imaginary passenger side brake pedal. “For fuck’s sake, slow down! I’ll shut up about him, okay?”
“I have all of the hyperagility upgrades,” she said, leather creaking under her fists again, jaw muscle tick-tick-ticking. “Sure you don’t want to test them?”
A sharp turn and sudden downhill drop left my stomach behind. Bile burned in my throat.
“I’ll stop calling Nick a retard to your face!” I yelled. “Are you happy, you fucking psycho?!”
She grinned and let off the accelerator. “Yes.”
We dropped back to a saner pace. I unclawed my fingers from around the handle and exhaled.
Then I giggled. “You’re about a few dozen fish short of a school, sister.”
“And you’re afraid of dying,” she said, still grinning like an alligator gar.
“Wrong,” I said. “I like living. It’s a fun game filled with lots of exciting prizes, but I can’t win if I’m dead.”
“Taking into account that we’re all going to die eventually, how exactly do you think you win this game?”
“By beating everyone else.”
She considered this for a second, then looked as if she were about to say something else, so I cut her off at the pass.
“Hey, they executed Harley. My father got life in The Hotel. What happened with that?”
Carina’s smile evaporated.
“I petitioned the Council.” She looked out at the dark road like she was looking down the long hallway of time. “It was a mercy killing. If any part of the real Harley was still alive in there, watching the things her body was doing…”
“Hmm. Hmm hmm hmm.” I pretended to scratch my chest idly with that washer I’d liberated from Carina’s pocket earlier, really digging the edge of the metal into the skin along my collarbone. I felt a long scrape open up through the thin material of my shirt. “Now we come to the most important question. The one that brings this tale home. The one that hits the hardest.”
Carina glanced at me.
“Were you hot?” I asked. “All dressed up like a party girl. Were you or were you not the torch that lights the fire in the pants of every observer? Were you the girl who sent all the innocent bystanders home every night wishing that they could lick the sweat off your velvet skin?”
After a second, the good corner of Carina’s lips lifted. “I think I might have been.”
Looking at the high contour of her unmarked cheekbone in the green dash light, I believed her. I scraped the washer harder.
NINE
We made it to Courten before midnight. The place was even more rudimentary than I’d been expecting—a few big houses within the city limits, plenty of open-air multiple family homes, and maybe eight or ten businesses in all. If Re Suli, the fix-it witch, was there somewhere, she wasn’t going to be hard to find.
Carina and I checked into the only hotel in town—an ecotourist stop—under names I made up before she could be honest and get us shot at again. Then we hauled our bags up to the portico overlooking the jungle and found a pair of unoccupied hammocks that were both an acceptable distance from everyone else and directly beneath a huge ceiling fan.
I kept my shirt on but lost the pants, climbed into my hammock, and carefully arranged the bloodsucker netting so I wouldn’t be sucked dry before morning. “Too bad it’s too hot to get some decent sleep. I know they’re catering to the earth-humpers and broke backpackers, but would it kill them to spring for some AC? I feel like I should be sleeping with my ventilator on.”
“With your delicate constitution, you probably should be,” Carina said, shouldering her bag. “Going to the bathroom.”
“Ten even says it’s a hole in the ground with a board over it. Check for wildlife before you squat.”
She waved over her shoulder without looking back.
I squeezed my eyes shut and listened to the sickening lack of air conditioning. It was almost like there was no electricity in this mudhole at all, like if I fell asleep I would wake up to pitch black and silence.
I reached for the washer, but came up empty. It was still in my pants pocket, folded away for the night inside my bag. I dug my thumbnail into my collarbone instead. Dug and listened.
It was a far cry from quiet out here in the jungle. The underbrush rustled and snapped endlessly. Something whooped five times, then went quiet. Bugs and birds and God knew what else buzzed and trilled on and on without ever stopping for breath. Underneath all of it was the roaring of a nearby river.
An electric sizzle ripped through the darkness, followed by a pained screech.
I giggled.
“What?” Carina was back. She’d added a huge white t-shirt to the loose pair of martial monk’s pants.
I laced my hands across my stomach. “Something got zapped by the town’s perimeter fence. Sounded like a cat.”
She dropped her bag under her hammock and set to work brushing out her hair. “They have black oncas down here, don’t they?”
“Plenty of other big game, too,” I said. “That’s why they have electric fences.”
“My mom told me a story once about a black onca that trapped a mother and her kids on the roof of their hut. The father ran to the village for help, but when he got back, the onca had already eaten through the mother’s ribcage and left her splayed open on the roof. They never found the children.”
“Holy balls!” I sat up in my hammock and glared at her. “What kind of story is that?”
She shrugged. “Just a bedtime story.”
“Your mom was sick.”
The good side of Carina’s mouth smiled. “She liked messing with me. Also, she had really vivid nightmares. I think she thought if she made them into bedtime stories for me, I would grow up to fear nothing.”
“That’s retarded,” I said. I leaned back and wiggled my shoulders, trying to get comfortable again. “Some offense intended.”
“None taken.”
“Like a whole lot of it.”
“Still not taking any.”
“Just so you know, that attitude super-proves my earlier argument about your fiancé.”
I caught a glimpse of a smirk on Carina’s face as she bent down to stick her brush in her duffel bag.
“If I tell you you’re the prettiest, will that make you feel secure enough to stop picking on people you’ve never met?” she asked.
I grinned. “Couldn’t hurt.”
Carina snorted, then climbed into her hammock and situated the netting. Before she lay back, she took a second to adjust her oversized shirt around her.
“Pajamas.” I shook my head. “You’re really bent on destroying the image I had of knights sleeping standing up in full combat gear, huh? Do you even keep a gun under your pillow, or is that a lie, too?”
“That would be crazy.” She shifted left to right a few times to get her hammock swinging, then leaned back and put her hands behind her head. “Imagine the number of judgment-impaired shootings.” I was about to open my mouth for a smart remark when she added, “No, I sleep with a grenade in my pocket.”
“You do not.”
She smiled, but didn’t look my way. “Startle me awake and find out.”
The jungle went about making its nighttime din for a while. If I didn’t focus too hard, I could almost hear a white noise to it. I was on the edge of dozing off—at that point when the back of your skull feels heavy and the top feels like it’
s dissolving—when Carina spoke again.
“I haven’t been handling you, Van Zandt. Not even when I wasn’t telling you the whole truth.”
I stretched my legs out straight, then let them bow back into the sling shape of the hammock. “Why not? You should have been.”
A Carina-pause. Then, “I like you. You can be annoying, but you also don’t bother with the stupid fishshit everyone else does.”
“Maybe I’m handling you,” I said.
She didn’t say anything to that, but her hammock creaked. It took me a second to realize that meant she had shrugged.
“Shrug you don’t care?”
“Shrug I don’t think you are,” she said.
I grinned. “That’s exactly what I would tell someone if I wanted them to trust me—that I trusted them.”
Another shrug. “You don’t have to believe me.”
“I’d say that, too. Play it off like I don’t care because I’m being completely straight with you and you’ll realize it all eventually.”
“I just don’t want anything to change,” Carina said. “I don’t want to wake up tomorrow and suddenly you’re cordial and polite. I like our friendship the way it is now.”
I worked my fingers inside the collar of my t-shirt and stared out at the jungle for a long time, scraping at my skinned collarbone, feeling the fresh scab and healthy tissue pile up under my nails in a satisfying cake, and wondering if that was what this really was, a friendship.
Nope, that was stupid. That was all of her log bridge stares and manipulation skills at work. She’d said word for word the things I would have said in her place, in a voice so nonchalant that I would be forced to accept it as genuine. And she’d said that she liked me. Unless she was twice the suicidal psycho she’d acted like in the car, there was no way that was anything but a lie.
That untied it. There was no denying that Carina was fun to poke a stick at—she poked back and took swipes at the stick now and then, even landed a couple good shots—but I needed to remember that I was messing with a predator, not a pet. She wasn’t just a manipulator, she was a manipulator who carried a knuckgun and was at least smart enough to trick me into thinking for a second that she might actually be friendly. The only person who could catch me was me, but one bullet in the back of the head and I would be just as dead as Smiley Wy the Eelfucker.
