Lights flashed against the buildings, and the sirens cut out as several more cop cars pulled down the street.
I nodded. “She’s hurt, but she’s alive.”
“They’re not going to like this, what you did.”
“What choice did I have?”
He sighed, his hands gripping the cement wall hard enough to make it crumble. “Two of them, they sent two of them after her. We should’ve known at some point they would act.”
“And? What are we supposed to do about it?”
I narrowed my gaze and peered down until I spied our target being tended to by the paramedics now.
They were guiding her to the back of the ambulance. She stumbled a few times, and I saw her repeatedly glancing towards the crashed car and the dead body jutting out of the windshield that the cops were studying with their flashlights.
Would she tell them a second one got away? Would they even believe her about that driver trying to kill her? Probably not. Humans tended to ignore the obvious.
“We need to go, the others will be waiting,” Tank informed me gruffly, turning for the other side of the building. His long black trench coat billowed out as he moved, and he pulled a hood up to cover his face.
I lingered a few seconds longer, cursing the night for having to reveal myself to her, but there’d been no other choice unless I wanted to watch her get run over and killed.
“Watch out for yourself,” I murmured to the night. “They’re coming for you.”
“Slade.”
I backed away and forced myself to follow Tank. If they were smart, they’d leave her alone with the cops crawling around like they were.
We had to report this incident and decide our next move.
Tank leapt across the alley and landed on the other rooftop as easily as he walked.
I followed, and we jumped from one roof to the next until we reached the end of the row.
After checking the coast was clear, we jumped off and to the pavement, jogging along towards the entrance to the tunnel. Guards were present, even if I couldn’t see them. That was the point.
We reached a large grate where the pavement sloped deeply downward, and water drained from the street overhead.
Tank waved his hand over the massive lock, whispering under his breath, and the lock clicked open with a resounding clink.
We stepped inside, and it closed soundlessly behind us. Our boot steps echoed back to us, and the deeper in we went, the more a sinking feeling started in my gut that the events we hoped would hold off a few more years, were about to start happening.
Eventually, light appeared ahead as we entered the main junction of tunnels that resided forgotten beneath the city.
Two guards nodded as we passed, but their gazes remained focused towards the tunnel, never wavering from their post.
“Slade! Tank! What took you two so long?”
“Problems, that’s what,” I growled, and veered right towards the raised metal platform with two ladders going up to it.
Four others stood on in it, two women and two men, looking as stressed and tired as I suddenly was.
“They’re here,” I said, the second my feet hit the grated metal.
“What?” Jenny snapped, Turning her head so fast her long black dreadlocks whipped around. Her eyes narrowed to dangerous slits as a hiss slipped from her mouth. “That’s not possible.”
“Maybe not, but I know what I saw.”
Tank stomped up behind me. “He’s right. Two of ‘em and we were almost too late.”
“Damn it! Davis!” she screamed out, and silence fell over the makeshift encampment underground. “Where the hell is Davis? I want him up here, now!”
“It’s not his fault,” I tried to defend him.
Jenny sliced her hand through the air, silencing me.
“It’s his job to watch, and clearly he is slacking. What happened?”
Jenny, Maura, Toby, and Preston, the ringleaders of this quadrant leaned in closer as I relayed the activities of the evening to them. Their faces were set in stone by the time I finished, especially when I had to tell them one of the attackers got away.
“You didn’t give chase, why?”
“I already exposed myself. I couldn’t risk going after him and alerting the mortals to our presence. Do you want a bigger mess on your hands?”
“No, no, you’re right.” Jenny leaned heavily on the table, the harsh random lighting of the lamps and torches catching the vivid white scars that covered her dark-skinned arms. “We’re not ready for this. Not even close.”
“What are my orders?” I asked.
“Same. If they’re risking making a move like this, we don’t have a choice, but we need more men,” Jenny muttered darkly, glaring at the maps on the table before her. “And your attack wasn’t the only one tonight.”
“What?” I glanced towards Tank, but he seemed as clueless as I was. “What happened?”
Jenny looked at Preston, her husband, and shrugged.
“You might as well tell them. They’ll find out sooner or later and I’d rather they take their anger out now, than lose it out there,” he said, but Jenny started to shake her head. “Jenny, tell them or I will.”
My heart pounded, and I wanted to punch something, the longer they made us wait. “What happened?” I repeated.
“An outpost was attacked,” Preston said when Jenny still refused to speak.
I swallowed hard as Tank cursed vividly beside me. “Which one?”
I knew before he even said it, but I had to hear. “Higgins Square… thirty dead, fifteen missing… we have no idea if they took prisoners or if they fled.”
The room spun around me, and I reached out for the metal railing to hold me up.
“Zara… she was found amongst the rubble,” Preston went on quietly. “Slade, I’m sorry, mate. I’m so sorry.”
“No…” I sank to the grated floor and held my head between my hands.
This wasn’t happening, not again.
Growling filled my ears, and I realized suddenly it was me, snarling as Tank tried to pull me to my feet.
“Get away!” I bellowed, and leapt down from the platform, stalking through the crowd of refugees and fighters until I reached my sad excuse for a room—a curtain draped over an alcove in the tunnels.
I paced the tiny space, seeing her smiling face over and over in my mind, but every time I blinked, her face shifted and became bloodied and broken.
“No!” I raged as I punched the concrete wall, over and over, until my skin split and blood spattered the wall.
The curtain was yanked aside, and Toby and Tank were there, grabbing me bodily and dragging me away, screaming bloody murder. At some point, I think Tank punched me to try and calm me down, and I let my body go limp.
They’d stolen everything from me so far, everything I cared about.
Tonight, I thought I was going to lose my target and instead, I lost something else, a part of me I would never get back.
This was how it was always going to be. They would just keep chipping away and chipping away until finally, there’d be nothing left of me.
“Rest, Slade,” Tank ordered after they got me situated in our infirmary away from prying eyes. “We’ll talk in the morning, eh?”
I rolled over and curled up into a ball, not sure if getting up tomorrow morning was possible.
Not anymore.
Four
Everest
I should have bolted when Slade did; I had no idea what to do in this situation.
Someone tried to run me down not once, but twice with their car, and now I was left standing with said car and a dead man inside.
The police arrived within minutes, paramedics not long after that. They wanted to check me over, or whatever, and numbly, I let them guide me to the ambulance. The entire time, I swore someone was watching me, but when I glanced over my shoulder towards the rooftops, there was nothing, but darkness.
The paramedic did a full check and t
hen tended to my scraped elbow and ensured me I had no broken ribs. They left me sitting on the bumper as two cops came over, eyeing me curiously.
“Are you sure you’re alright, ma’am?” the woman asked me softly.
“Yeah, I mean shaken up you know, but I’m fine.”
“Why don’t you run through what happened?”
I nodded nervously and did my best to explain the crazy event that just occurred. When I was finished, she was tapping her pen on the pad of paper in her hand, staring into the alley.
“And you say this person just ran off?”
“Yeah, the one left alive in the car and the one who shoved me out of the way.”
“Wait, there was a second one in the car?” she asked sharply. “You didn’t say that before.”
“Sorry, thought I did,” I mumbled. “Everything happened so fast.”
“It’s okay, hon. Just take a breather. Do you have your ID with you at least?”
“Sure,” I said, even though a voice in the back of my mind said this was a bad idea. Not like I was about to lie to the cops though.
When I showed it to them, and they realized I was a minor, they insisted on driving me home.
“No, I’m fine,” I insisted. “Even the paramedics said so.”
They glanced at each other then back at me and seemed to be silently having an argument about what to make of this entire situation. They’d been nice since getting here, but the last thing I wanted was to bring cops to the apartment for a number of reasons.
One, they might realize that Mom was gone, and a couple of underage kids were living alone—bad. Two, they might realize I was illegally stealing my mother’s government assistance money—really bad. And three, people who brought cops around my neighborhood for any reason got labeled as snitches—worse.
None of those things seemed like a good idea to me, but these two cops were insistent. The woman was probably in her late thirties or early forties and had that motherly air about her. The other was a rookie cop who I could tell had a beef about being put under a lady officer. He kept trying to talk over her, but I kind of adored the way she shut him down and called him a stupid rookie when he dared to interrupt her. But I started to like them less the longer they stood around debating on what to do with me.
Officer Rosa, the woman, kept her gaze on me, watchful as if she was waiting for me to take off running. I wasn’t about to do that. I hadn’t done anything wrong, but I did want to get out of there and get home, alone. From the tone she’d used so far, I was sure she had kids of her own, probably a few teenagers, and it was clear my wanting them not to drive me home was sounding suspicious to her.
The other cop, Officer Stenson, was her polar opposite. He was annoying and a little rude, but seemed just as ready to cart me off to their patrol car just so I would get out of his hair and let him get back to his night.
“What, did you sneak out of the house or something and don’t want your parents finding out?” he asked.
I crossed my arms and lifted my chin. “No, I was on my way home from work, at the museum. It’s not that long of a walk from the bus stop to home. I do it almost every night.”
“Just let us drive you home,” Officer Rosa said. “And, then we’ll be on our way, okay hon? I’ll sleep better tonight knowing I saw you to your front door.” She handed me back my ID with a smile, and I tried to think of a lie, any lie that would get her to back off, but nothing came to mind.
Reluctantly I agreed.
While another group of officers handled the scene of the crime, these two drove me the three blocks over to my apartment building. Officer Rosa asked a few more questions on the way, double checking I didn’t recognize the car, or the man who’d been driving. If I could describe the one that ran off, but I told her it’d been too dark. She asked again, too, about the guy that saved me, but I kept his name to myself.
Slade.
Interesting name for my hero of the night.
As Stenson parked out front, my nerves ratcheted up another notch, and I couldn’t stop shaking. I knew that absolutely nothing good was going to come from this, but I didn’t have a choice.
Officer Stenson looked at my rundown building with a smug smirk on his face, his eyes judging it and me all over again. He huffed, muttering something under his breath and I was pretty sure I knew exactly what he was thinking, that I was some statistic his ass was wasting time on.
By the time they were walking me to the door, I sensed Officer Rosa had read right through me. The tired, overworked eyes. The way too mature attitude for my age. The fact that I had no cell phone and was working such a late shift. I could tell that she knew before we even made it to the apartment that there was no parent present. I was silently thanking myself for finally getting around to throwing away the booze I collected the past few months. At least the apartment was mostly clean for when I opened the door.
I fumbled with my key, buying a few more seconds to gather my thoughts and hoping they’d just take off now that we were here, but Officer Rosa cleared her throat loudly. I stuck the key in the lock and opened the front door. They entered our apartment right behind me, and the noise woke up Mason who was asleep on the couch.
He looked terrified as he glanced past me to the two cops. “Everest, what’s going on?” he hurried over to me, rubbing his eyes. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine, kid. There was just a bit of an incident with a car, but I’m good,” I said, pleading for him to take it in stride with my gaze. “Go wake Mom up.”
It took barely a second for his head to nod subtly. He gave me a knowing look and recited a little speech for the officers.
“Aunt Julie called a few hours ago, and she’s about to have the baby. Mom isn’t here. She told me to wait up for you and to let you know.” He nervously glanced in the officers’ direction.
I turned, expecting to see the officers satisfied and about to tell me to have a good night, but both of them shifted on their feet, staring around the apartment then back at me and Mason. Rosa clearly wasn’t buying it.
“Now, son, you and your sister aren’t in trouble, okay? But can you talk to me for a few minutes?” Rosa asked as she stood in front of my brother.
He looked to me, but I wasn’t sure what she was about to ask, so he nodded. “I guess so.”
“Good. How old you?”
“Twelve,” he replied slowly.
“And your mom, is she gone a lot?”
“He told you, our Aunt’s having a baby,” I said stiffly, but she didn’t even look at me.
“Mason, are you often left home alone?”
“Well… sometimes, but it’s just because Everest works so much.”
I mentally groaned, but it wasn’t his fault. They were cops. Mason was scared, I saw it, and I wished I could make this all go away, but there was nothing I could do short of making the situation much worse.
“She does. Does she go to school, too?”
Mason cringed, but nodded fervently.
“You’re not lying to me are you, Mason?” she asked.
He shook his head, but his eyes were nearly bugging out of his head. “Where is your Mom, Mason? Tell me the truth now.”
Before I could say anything to cut him off, tears glimmered in his eyes, and he sniffed hard, but the truth poured out of him, and my heart ached for my brother.
I thought I’d been carrying all the stress since Mom up and vanished, but I hadn’t realized how badly it was affecting him, too. Defeated, I sank onto the couch and hung my head, holding it in my hands as he confessed Mom had been missing since the beginning of August.
“It’s alright, son, it’s alright,” she soothed and handed him a tissue. “Three months, that’s how long she’s been gone?” She directed this question to me, and I managed a weak nod. “Well, this changes things.”
I had nothing to say and simply watched as she tried to console Mason. All while this was going on, Officer Stenson had been walking around.
&nb
sp; I had no idea what he was looking for when his brow furrowed, and he reached into a potted plant by the couch. I frowned, not sure what he had in his hand when he pulled out a bottle of vodka.
I cursed silently and wiped a hand down my face. I thought I’d found them all, but apparently not. Who would’ve thought she’d stick one in the damn house plant?
“Everest, it’s better if you tell us what’s going on here,” Officer Rosa stated firmly, after she guided Mason to the couch. “Does your mother drink?”
“Drink, nah. She tries to drown herself in booze,” I uttered, disgusted with her all over again.
“Does she run off often like this?”
I ground my teeth and nodded.
Officer Rosa sighed while Stenson continued walking around the apartment.
I had no idea what he was looking for and just sat there as our fragile world started to come apart before my eyes.
When I heard papers shuffling behind me, I whipped around to see Stenson rummaging through the stack of bills, pay stubs, and check stubs on the counter.
“What are you doing?” I snapped, jumping off the couch and snatching the papers out of his hands. “That’s none of your business! Get out of my apartment. You don’t have any reason for being here!”
Rosa looked at me with these sad eyes. “Honey, I think I do.”
My insides churned. I felt like I was going to hurl. We’d been so careful, and then that damned car had to come out of nowhere and try to kill me.
Stenson gently reached for the papers again, and I handed them over without a fight.
He handed them to Rosa. “They’ve been cashing their mom’s welfare check to get by,” he said, and this time he sounded sincerely sad. His judgment had vaporized into pity; he just saw us as pathetic kids now, and even though that complex of his was gone, I still wanted to punch him.
I made it back to Mason and as he gripped my hand, and gave him a reassuring squeeze.
“I just got a promotion today,” I lied, as though that would somehow matter. “We don’t need that government money anymore. I can even repay them if we have to. Just please, pretend you didn’t see any of this. She’ll be back, I swear she will.”
“You’ve only just turned seventeen,” Rosa said. “You’re still just a kid. You shouldn’t have to be worrying about stuff like this. And what if there’s an emergency? What if something happens to you, Everest? You’re risking your little brother’s safety.”
Mortal Raised Page 3
