by Kelly Meding
“So before I kill you,” I said, “you wanna tell me what’s so fucking funny?”
“You got strange ideas about who I work for, bitch,” he replied.
Alarm bells clanged in my head, quickly silenced by logic. He was a Halfie—not prone to reasoned thought or personal planning—therefore lying. No one else would have wanted to hold me and Wyatt captive in a dingy underground jail cell while my clock ran out.
Jock Guy’s laughing snarl morphed into a familiar leer. “Told ’em we should’ve fucked you when we had the chance.”
My cheeks blazed, and my hands trembled. My heart hammered in my ears and made it hard to hear. The world fuzzed out for just a second. Cold, oily skin and blinding pain fell like a theater curtain, heavy and suffocating. All over again.
I stood up, sensing the new elevation more than experiencing it, moved back, and slammed my right foot down on Jock Guy’s nose. Cartilage snapped and crackled. Blood spurted beneath my shoe. The laughter stopped.
I stumbled backward, hit my ankles on the wheel hub, and nearly fell out of the truck bed. I hit the edge instead and sat down hard, gripping the cold metal with both hands. Grounding me as I panted through the unexpected … what? Anxiety attack? So not what I needed.
The Halfie was dead, nose effectively driven up into his skull. Not the smartest move of my afterlife, but far from the dumbest. Blood pounded in my temples. My forearm throbbed, and I still hadn’t checked the wound. The bullet hadn’t exited; I was just lucky it hadn’t hit bone.
The truck bed bounced, then Wyatt was squatting in front of me. Warm hands covered my knees but didn’t squeeze. “Evy?”
“That was pretty stupid, huh?” I asked. Damn my voice for shaking. I’d killed a Halfie. So fucking what?
“We’ve both done dumb things when we lose control.”
Therein lay the problem. Too much was at stake to let myself lose control again. My emotional messes had to wait. I avoided looking at Wyatt. Didn’t want to see any pity or understanding in his eyes. Didn’t need that side of him then. No, I needed my Handler—the guy who’d tell me to shape up or just go kill myself and save the Dregs the trouble of doing it.
“We should check the body before it desiccates,” I said.
Wyatt stood up and backed away, careful to avoid the mass of oozing blood filling the cracks and lines of the truck bed. The Halfie’s skin was already paler than white, nearly translucent. I crouched and patted the pockets of his jeans—nothing. No pockets in his T-shirt, nothing to identify him or where he’d come from.
“Seems strange that a kid who can barely shoot would be given a .45,” Wyatt said, more to himself than to me.
“Big gun,” I agreed. Whoever sent him should have been smart enough give him a model easier to handle, especially for a novice. Jock Guy had missed us both—sort of, but my wound was more an accident—and died without much of a fight. Wasted foot soldier, if you asked me.
I grabbed at his left arm, the one stuck beneath his body. Needed to roll him sideways to check his other jeans pockets. Just to be sure he didn’t have—
The kid fell onto his back, releasing his hidden hand and a pinless hand grenade.
I stared. “You have got to be kidding—”
“Get down!”
Wyatt slammed into my midsection, knocking us both backward and over the edge of the truck bed. The fury of the exploding grenade propelled us to the hard ground in a wave of heat, sound, fire, and sizzling flesh. It was impossible to breathe.
I’m not ready to die again, my brain screamed. Images of Jesse and Ash flashed in my mind, waiting for me, and were quickly chased away by blackness.
Chapter Five
Four Years Ago
This can’t possibly be the right address. But it’s too late to question the cabbie. He’s already sped off down the street, disappearing into traffic. He knows better than to hang around this part of Mercy’s Lot after dark. Cottage Place sounds so innocent and peaceful. Ha.
I’m surrounded by struggling shops in old storefronts, each protected by rows of steel bars and less-than-impressive security systems. The uneven sidewalks are strewn with litter and overflowing trash cans. The strip club across the street flashes neon signs that invite all the wrong sort. As many hookers as johns pace the corners, all keeping an eye out for cruising cop cars.
As if they’ll see any around here.
The cab has left me in front of a tiny jewelry store called A Puzzlement. I’m curious about the name and mentally check it off as something to explore later. My destination is the shadowy alcove to the store’s right—supposedly the entrance to stairs leading up to a series of cheap apartments. My new home.
I shift the plastic grocery bag that holds my entire life from my right hand to my left. Two changes of clothes are wrapped around a pair of sheathed, serrated knives—a graduation gift, of sorts—plus the sealed envelope I’m supposed to deliver to my Handler, Wyatt Truman. He even sounds like a prick—and if Handlers are anything like our Boot Camp instructors, I know I’ll hate this guy.
“How much for a blow job?” The man’s voice is nearby, slurred, drunk.
I ignore him, not caring much what the whore he’s addressing says, and stroll toward the alcove. Her rates are not my business. A bulky shape slips into my path. Meaty jowls and yellow teeth are all I see. Rum-soaked breath puffs in my face. I skid to a stop, disgusted.
“Hey, rude much?” I snarl.
“I said, how much for a blow job?”
My mouth falls open. I can’t help it. Okay, I’m wearing denim shorts cut a little high—I’ve got the legs, I’m going to show them off—and a blue midriff-baring T-shirt, but fucking hell! “Ask me that again.”
He blinks bleary eyes, not getting the warning in my tone. “How much for a fucking blow job, honey?”
I step closer. He misinterprets and doesn’t protect himself. I smash my knee into his groin, and the rummy drops to his knees, howling. No one pays much attention. I step around, into the alcove, past a row of metal mailboxes, and ascend the badly lit stairs.
They smell like sweat but are otherwise clean. At the top of the stairs is a brief corridor lined with six thick metal doors. I track down to number 4, raise my hand to knock, and hesitate.
Going inside will change my life. Boot Camp had started out as an alternative to real jail time. I hated every single second of it. Hated the snarling instructors, the torturous training sessions, the exhaustion that was both mental and physical. Hated the way we’d killed to survive. And yet part of me loved it. Loved the sense of inclusion I’d felt for the first time in my eighteen years of existence. Loved the control I now had over my life. The training to hurt anyone who tried to hurt me. The ability to protect myself.
I could take this new power and leave. Get the hell out of this city and start over somewhere else. Forget that vampires and shape-shifters and goblins exist, and that my job now is to hunt them. To keep them in their place. To punish them for acts against humanity. I can’t do that anywhere else—the largest uncontrolled population of Dregs in the world is in this city. Out there, I’m alone. Here I can have a purpose.
The door opens before I can knock. An Asian woman gives me a once-over so cursory I might as well be invisible, then looks over her shoulder and shouts, “Fresh meat’s here.”
She retreats into the apartment, leaving me in the open doorway. I hesitate, then go inside.
It’s a hole. Peeling paint, stained floor, windows covered with ragged curtains. The sofa is faded beyond any reasonable color or pattern. Two other chairs look ready for the dump, and the small kitchenette is a grease fire waiting to happen. And yet it still feels … comfortable.
Only three doors, though. One has to be the bathroom, which means two bedrooms. Sharing. Fucking fantastic.
A young man with Hispanic features unfolds himself from the sofa and stands. He’s tall, towering over the chick by a good foot, broad-shouldered and muscular. Handsome in a high-school-football-player k
ind of way. He waves his hand at me—not in a greeting. I close the door. Guess I know who my roommate isn’t.
“Evangeline Stone?” he says.
“Evy,” I say. “Who are you?”
“Jesse Morales. Welcome.” Long legs carry him across the room. I tense, but he only offers his hand, which I tentatively shake.
The woman perches on the arm of one of the chairs, keeping herself a good distance away. “Welcome her when she’s lasted more than a week,” she says.
Heat flushes my cheeks, and I clench my fists. “You want to see me fight? Bring it on.”
“No one’s fighting,” Jesse says. “That’s Ash Bedford, team senior.”
I roll my eyes. “Terrific. So where’s the guy who gets my paperwork?”
“On his way,” Ash says, accusation in her tone. “You’re early.”
“Look, if you’ve got some sort of stick up your ass about me being here—”
“You’re here because our partner died, kiddo, so don’t expect a warm welcome and a hug. Prove you belong here, and then the stick comes out.”
She is dead serious. I killed a girl my age in order to graduate Boot Camp, but it hadn’t occurred to me that someone else died to make a place for me in this Triad. Two deaths to get in. Three people to a team. It’s how it works.
“How did your partner die?” I ask.
She blinks, seems unprepared for the question.
Jesse replies. “His name was Cole. Found his charred remains in a furnace last week after being missing for two days. He was probably drained by Halfies first, because it was near a known hangout over on Worchester. Ash and I went in and burned the place to the ground.”
Wow. “Sorry,” I say.
Behind me, the doorknob turns. I dart sideways and avoid being smacked with the bulky metal. In walks another man, older than Jesse but half a head shorter. Black hair and eyes, a five-o’clock shadow on his chin and jaws. Dressed in khakis and shirtsleeves, he looks like he’s more at home Uptown among the nine-to-fivers than here in Mercy’s Lot. Might even be cute if he stops looking so annoyed.
“You sure as hell know how to make an impression,” he says to me without preamble but with the same once-over treatment I got from Ash.
I glare. “Excuse me?”
“I stepped over a guy downstairs moaning about a blond bitch and a misunderstanding, so I can only assume he meant you.”
I cross my arms over my chest, plastic bag swinging. “I’m not a fucking whore, and he’s not likely to forget it anytime soon.”
He slams the door hard enough to make me jump, then steps closer. Sinister. “The first thing you need to remember, Evangeline, is that Triads work best when we aren’t remembered. We require secrecy to be effective. You keep going around dressed like that and nut-kicking drunk idiots, you’ll end up just another name carved into the wall.”
Everything about him makes me want to punch him. He hasn’t introduced himself, but he has to be the Handler. He looks like a Wyatt. And a prick.
“Where are your papers?” he asks.
I dig the envelope out of the bag and hand it over. He rips into it, scans the contents. I have no idea what’s written there, but it doesn’t seem to impress him. He folds it, then tucks it into his back pocket. From the other pocket he produces a cell phone and holds it out. I take it gingerly. I’ve never owned one before—they’re expensive as hell.
“Your number is stored in the memory, so memorize it,” Wyatt says. “Memorize the other three numbers on speed dial. I’m 1, Ash is 2, Jesse is 3. You are never to use this phone for personal calls unrelated to work, and you are not to divulge your phone number to anyone outside of the Triads under any circumstances. Understood?”
“Yep.”
“The work schedule for each team is four days on, two days off, on a rotating basis. When you’re on, you’re on for twenty-four hours. You are to be available and answer when I call or text you. If more than fifteen minutes pass without a response, and you are neither dead nor seriously wounded …”
His poisonous stare fills in his unspoken words, and I nod. He is seriously scary when he tries hard. “I might as well be, right?” I say, perhaps a bit too glib. “But those two days I’m off, my time is my own?”
“Yes. Just don’t call attention to yourself. The Dregs may be animals, but they do remember faces. You flash yours around town too much when you aren’t working, and you’ll make yourself a target.”
“Right. And no more kneeing drunk assholes.”
The corners of his mouth quirk. “Exactly.”
“So are we on or off right now?”
“We’re off rotation at the moment. We’ll go out tomorrow and show you the ropes—”
“I grew up around here. I know the Lot.”
Ash snorts loudly. “Which clubs within thirty blocks of here are most often frequented by Halfies?” she asks. “Which apartment building north of us exclusively houses a population of were-birds?”
I really don’t like her. How the hell I’ll work with her is beyond me, so I stay quiet. Because I don’t know those answers.
“We show you the ropes,” Wyatt continues, “and then you go out patrolling tomorrow night with Jesse and Ash. You survive the night, even bag something bad, and we go back into the rotation.”
“Fair enough,” I say. I look forward to bagging something. It’s why I’m here. And to wiping that sneer off Ash Team Senior’s face.
Wyatt smiles. It’s the first crack in his otherwise serious veneer, and he proves my theory correct: he is handsome when he smiles. He walks over to the kitchenette. I wait mutely, not sure what’s next. Jesse and Ash don’t move.
In the kitchen, Wyatt pulls five small glasses out of a cabinet, followed by a bottle of whiskey. He pours a finger of liquor into each. Only when he’s finished do Jesse and Ash approach the counter. They each take a glass, Wyatt a third. I feel as though I’m intruding on something private, so I stay put. Until Wyatt pushes one of the remaining glasses toward me.
I set my bag on the floor near the door, approach, and take the offered glass. I don’t like straight whiskey but am willing to play along. They look so serious. They raise their glasses over the fifth, so I do the same.
“To Cole,” Wyatt says. “And to Evangeline.”
“Evy,” I say.
He nods. We drink. The whiskey scorches my throat and sears my stomach. My eyes water. Nasty.
We move on to other business, and the fifth whiskey glass remains untouched for the rest of the night.
Chapter Six
10:30 A.M.
Kismet’s stomping footsteps preceded her by a good thirty seconds. She rounded the edge of the exam table’s pristine white curtain, eyes blazing as hot as her flaming hair. She stopped at the edge, took a moment to look me over—needlessly bandaged forearm, healing bruises on my face and shoulders from my tumble to the concrete—then laid into me.
“What the hell happened down there, Stone? Three cars destroyed, and now Truman’s in surgery?”
I flinched internally but was able to keep my expression neutral. “How many Halfies have you met who run around with grenades in their pockets?” And I wasn’t asking as sarcasm; the unexpected explosive had me thoroughly flummoxed.
“You’re lucky we were still upstairs, or you’d be trying to explain all that to hospital security.”
“Hey, I didn’t invite him to the party, Kismet; he was waiting. He knew where to find us.” I briefly filled her in on the Halfie’s familiarity and the few tidbits of information he’d shared, all of which helped morph Kismet’s glare into puzzlement.
“Someone’s still trying to kill you,” she said.
I rolled my eyes. “Someone’s always trying to kill me. My problem with it is that this someone is using the same people the old someone was.”
“Are you certain you were the target?”
My mind shifted gears, spinning back to the first few moments after the explosion. On my back with Wyatt pinni
ng me down. Smoke stinging my eyes, making it hard to breathe. Struggling to stay conscious. Losing the fight.
“No,” I said, an odd catch in my voice. I cleared my throat. Hard. “No, I’m not sure.”
Kismet took a few steps forward, moving within arm’s reach of the exam table. Her expression softened, less business and more friendly. “What has the doctor said?”
“Not much.” I glanced at the curtain, as if able to summon a doctor by that simple gesture. No one came. “If you like irony, you’ll love this. The knife I used to gut the Halfie was turned into shrapnel by the explosion. A piece of it got Wyatt square in the back, but I don’t know what it hit.”
“He’s come out of worse.”
I snorted. “Yeah, sure, he died and lived to tell about it. Too bad not everyone’s been so lucky.”
And once again, my thoughts circled back to Alex, and the part of me that was still Chalice nearly collapsed under her grief. My fingers found the delicate silver cross, undamaged by all it had been through. Luckier than its wearer. Worry for Wyatt combined with grief, and a knot formed in my throat. I swallowed.
“About that,” Kismet said.
My head snapped up; she had my full attention. “About what?”
“Sooner or later, we’ll need to decide on a plan of action for Alex. I’m sure he has family, coworkers, friends, who will start to worry when he stops showing up.”
“If they haven’t already.” I didn’t know any of those things. Not consciously, at least. If Chalice knew his family and social circle intimately, her imprinted memories weren’t sharing the info. Another good reason to leave that apartment behind, before her pals and old boyfriends started showing up.
“Procedure is—”
I cut her off with a sharp wave of my hand. “I know what the fucking procedure is; you don’t have to remind me.” The idea of reporting Alex Forrester as a missing person, and then making sure the file found its way to the very bottom of the Department’s priority list, made my blood boil. He deserved better than being remembered as another case number.
