Backs Against the Wall (Survival Series) (5 page)

During
that week, the weight of Vin’s ring gets heavier and heavier. After the first week, when I know I’ve missed the market and it won’t come around again for another month, I can barely choke down my meals I’m so riddled with guilt. Letting people in is more painful than I remember. It’s not just the pain of watching them die, rise again and having to kill them yourself for the final time. That’s manageable. It’s this everyday complicated, emotional nonsense that makes me want to cut and run every single day. It has occurred to me more than once to pack up my gear and head for the hills. To leave all of this behind me and forget any of it ever happened. Ryan, Vin, Trent, the Colony, Nats, the kitchen crew, the pumpkin pie. It was all a strange, tasty dream. One I will work for years to forget. But I know from experience that I can and will eventually forget. At least I hope.

“Joss?” Ryan prods
, pulling me back to reality. “Lay it on us.”

Trent is sitting beside Ryan across from me on the floor. The long lines of the tall windows shine huge rectangles of light into the room around us, casting the boys partially in shadow, partially in light. Trent’s eyes watch me intently from the
dark and I think it’s no accident, the way he’s sitting.

“When I was in the Colony,” I begin, spinning the ring on my finger nervously. “I made friends with some people. One of them was a pimp from The Hive.”

Ryan scowls at me, surprised and obviously annoyed by this information. Trent couldn’t care less.

“He was in there with two of the women from their stables. One of them went full native, but the other wanted out just like us. I ended up making some friends in the kitchens too. Eventually, they told me that the people in the Colonies aren’t happy with how things are being run.
They’re locked in, just like I was, and being preached to about keeping the unclean out. Their cleansing process when you go in there is creepy thorough, I can vouch for that. But worst of all, they’re separating families. They’re doing it to keep people in line, to have a threat to hang over their heads. I think the higher ups must know their people are getting pissed at being locked in and they’re trying to keep them under control. Otherwise, why do it?”

Trent nods in silent agreement.

“And these people,” Ryan asks, disbelieving, “the angry ones, they want out of the Colonies?”

“Not
entirely. They don’t want to come live in the wild. It terrifies them.”

“Then where will they go? And how will they break out?”

“How did Joss do it?” Trent asks, his eyes on me.

I don’t flinch. “
That’s not important.”

Trent grins slightly, but he doesn’t respond. He knows. Not even because Ryan told him, which he might have, but he just knows.

“We’ll have to break them out,” I tell Ryan. “After that, they want to gain control of the buildings again. Get their freedoms back.”

He laughs. “Seriously?
They want to stage a coup? And you and I, we’re going to break them out? How?”

I’m annoyed he’s laughing at me, but I’m grateful he’s lumped himself in with me as well. I hadn’t hoped for that.

“We won’t do it alone.”

“No, because that’s impossible.”

“We need help from The Hive.”

His smile disappears. “Now I know you’re joking,” he says seriously.

I shake my head faintly. “I’m not.”

“Joss, that’
s insane,” Ryan says, his voice rising. “You can’t work with The Hive. You can’t ask for
help
from The Hive.”

“I have an in.” I hold up my splinted left arm, showing him my finger wearing the ring. “
Vin, the guy from The Hive, he gave me this when I left. He said to take it to Marlow, the head of The Hive. He said to tell Marlow that he sent me.”

“This is the guy who got stabbed, isn’t it?” Ryan asks, his voice going low.

I nod. “He was stabbed because of me. Well, partially. Partly because he was a careless man whore, but also because of me. I owe it to him to go back for him. I owe it to all of them.”

“And this guy, this pimp, he thought Marlow would help you if you showed him that ring?”

“No. He was pretty sure it wouldn’t work.”

Ryan frowns, his face exasperated. “Then why are you even thinking about doing this?”

I don’t have a good answer for that. Not a smart one. So I give him the only one I do have.

“Because I made a promise,
” I say firmly. “I don’t do that very often. I’d like to keep it.”

“That’s honorable,” Trent tells me.

Ryan shakes his head at him. “It’s stupid is what it is.”

“Most honorable things are.”

“I need you to take me to the market,” I tell Ryan. “I need to go there and make contact with someone from The Hive so I can try to get an audience with Marlow.”

“The market isn’t the place to do it,” Trent tells me.

My shoulders sag, deflating with my meager hopes. “Then where? The market is the only place I know of where you all come together.”

“Really?”
he asks, his eyebrows raised.

“Oh man,” Ryan mutters. He runs his hand over his face quickly, looking annoyed. “Don’t.”

“Are you talking about the fights?” I ask. “The Risen fights?”

Trent
nods solemnly. “There are more members, more high members, of The Hive at the Underground than you’ll ever find in the markets. If you go to the market, you’ll only get the run around and end up owing a favor to some ugly people who got you nowhere. You want Marlow or one of his inner circle, you have to go to the Underground.”

“Can you take me there?”

“Yes.”

“No,” Ryan says firmly.

“Why not?” I demand.

“
Because this is stupid, Joss. This whole entire thing is crazy. What are you hoping to gain from talking to Marlow? His help? He won’t help you. They’re not a helpful bunch.”

“I know that,” I say indignantly.

“Then what are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking I have to try!” I shout, losing myself. “I’m thinking I care for once and I want to help people.
Vin and Nats, they’re like me, Ryan. They’ll die in a place like that. It will break them just like it would have broken me. And I care so that bothers me and it sucks but the switch has been flipped and you flipped it so you can’t tell me to undo what’s already been done.”

Ryan stares at me in the falling light, his face looking strong and golden in the amber glow. He’s changed everything and he knows it. He can hate this plan all he wants, but he has to understand that if I’m going to care about him, I’m going to care about others as well. It may get me killed, just as I knew feeling anything for him could, but it doesn’t make it any less worth it. I can see it in his eyes, what
Nats warned me about. It’s harder to live than it is to survive, but he’s worth it. Going to sleep knowing I tried for the others, even if I’m sleeping in the stables of The Hive, will be worth it.

“I’ll take you there,” Ryan tells me quietly. Reluctantly. “Give me two weeks and I’ll take you.”

“Two weeks? Why not tonight?”

He snorts, shaking his head. “You can’t go with that
splint on. They get off on weakness and you’ll have to at least be able to pretend your arm isn’t useless. Besides, I haven’t been there in a while. I can’t just show up one night with a girl no one’s ever seen before on my arm, asking to talk to the boss.”

“You’ve been to the fights before?”

“A time or two.”

I turn to Trent. “You too?”

He simply nods.

“And they know you down there?”

“Yeah,” Ryan says, smiling sadly. “They know me there.”

A week later, while Ryan and Trent show their faces in the Underground on the regular, I make a visit to Crenshaw. It’s a little scary going out with my arm in the splint and the Risen population still bloated from the fall of the Colony
, a Colony I have now lived inside of, but I’m going stir crazy in my apartment. I have to get out and I have to face Crenshaw.

When I go to my wall of weapons to pick something out, I
nearly burst into tears. There, hanging in its home, is my ASP. It must have been here this entire time, I just never noticed it because I didn’t need to, but now that I see it I’m nearly crying with relief. After Trent saw me taken he must have told Ryan where it happened. Maybe Trent told him that I’d lost my weapon or maybe he found it on accident, who knows. The important thing is that it’s here, right where I need it.

And I do need it. The Risen population is still high, still an ongoing problem reminding me of the old days.
They shuffle and bumble down the streets, through alleyways and into everything. I stand in my doorway for a bit watching and remembering as they walk into each other. Into the remnants of cars. Into old sign posts. It’d be comical if it weren’t such a pain. If it didn’t remind me of the worst times of my very, very worst case scenario life.

I manage to use my ASP to take dow
n three on the way to the woods. My breathing hitches as I run toward them. I can’t afford to be scared but I can’t trust myself either, not with this jacked up arm. I struggle to stay calm, to be numb and smart as I work through them. Each one drops with a fractured skull and a hit to the temple just for good measure. Injured or no, it never hurts to be thorough. Only this does, it hurts. Physical activity of any kind, especially running or bashing in skulls, makes my arm throb to a painful rhythm.

When I reach the woods and call out for Crenshaw, I’m shocked to see him emerge entirely from the shadows. He walks right up to me, staff ever in hand, and wraps his arms tightly around me without a word.

“Cren,” I say awkwardly, my mouth pressed into the hood of his robe, “do you know you’re hugging me?”

He pulls back, still holding onto my shoulders. His face is very nearly beaming. “Athena, I’d thought you lost for the ages.”

I smile despite my discomfort at his proximity. “No, I’m still here.”

“Thank the stars for small favors,” he says, gesturing
to the blue, afternoon sky. “Come, sit with me awhile and tell me of your adventures to the great beyond.”

He leads me through the bushes toward his hut, past the traps and snares meant to deter and murder anyone dumb enough to trespass here.

“There’s not much to tell, really.”

“They took you,” he says frankly, his face firm. Annoyed.

“Yes.”

“The rogues,” he grumbles
as we enter his hut. He sits me down across from him at his small table. “They knew not with whom they were dealing. Athena! Goddess of War and Vengeance.”

“
Amen to that.”

“How did you escape?”

I hesitate, unsure how I want to handle this. I didn’t want to admit to Ryan what I’d done and I can’t imagine telling the story to Crenshaw. He might be proud, which I don’t know if I’ll particularly like, or he could be angry with me. Again, not something I’d like.

“I heeded wise words,” I tell him meaningfully. “I kept my wits sharp and luck
favored the prepared.”

“Ha!” Crenshaw exclaims excitedly, clapping his hands together once. “Wonderful. Well done, my dear. I knew you were not a lost cause.”

“Thank you,” I say, not really sure it’s a compliment. Maybe it’s just an observation. Stupid Trent.

“Your
arm,” Crenshaw says suddenly, his demeanor becoming sedated. “Have you been caring for it? Do you need anything for the pain or infection?”

“No, thank you. I’ve been taking medicines for it.”

He scowls at me. “From whom? Not one of those Charlatan’s in the markets, I hope.”

“No,
Cren. From you.”

Crenshaw stares at me for a lone moment before nodding sagely. “The boy.”

“Yes,” I reply, feeling nervous. I’m breaking a rule here by mentioning a Lost Boy in his presence. We never speak specifics and I’ve just gotten very, very specific.

“He’s a good one, that lad. Stay close to him.”

“Really?” I ask, shocked. “I thought I was supposed to avoid the company of men.”

Crenshaw nods again, watching me. “There are few good men left in this world of wraiths, devils and
fools, my child. Should you find one, you’d be an idiot to walk away. And you, Athena,” he says, heavily, “are no idiot.”

“I don’t know about that. I’ve been pretty
stupid lately.”

He waves my protest away dismissively. “Youth!” he cries, as though that one word explains
away every complication in my entire world.

And who knows?
Maybe it does.

***

Two nights later I’m scared to death by a pounding on my door. It’s not frantic, but it’s loud and insistent. I wrap my blanket around me, hiding the shorts and threadbare t-shirt I’m sleeping in, and run for the door.

“Who is it?” I whisper into the crack, feeling ridiculous.
I’m not used to visitors. All I know is that if their answer is ‘
Ughhhhh’
, they are not coming in.

“Joss, it’s us,” Ryan replies weakly.

I quickly lift the board off the door and fling it open. There they stand, Trent and Ryan, leaning against each other. They’re both covered in blood. Some of it is way too dark to be theirs. To be human.

“What the hell happened to you two?”

“Can we come in and tell you that?” Ryan asks impatiently. “My leg is killing me.”

I step aside to let them pass, but I eye Trent hard as I do. “Why does his leg hurt?”

“You ask that like you think I had something to do with it.”

“Did you?”

Trent chuckles quietly. I get no other answer.

I slam the door, dropping the
board over it again. Trent drops Ryan down carefully in the middle of the room. He collapses back, breathing hard with his arm thrown over his eyes. I watch as he flexes his right leg back and forth, a grimace etched around his mouth.

“What happened?” I ask
again, my tone softening. I go to step closer, to kneel down to help him, but Trent comes straight at me. I instinctively back up against the door, my eyes darting toward my weapons wall as his shadow moves through the dark loft.

“Easy,” he says calmly. “I was just leaving.”

“What about Ryan?”

“You’ll play nurse to him better than I will.
The gang can’t know he’s fighting freelance. I’ve gotta get back and tell everyone he’s spending the night with a pro named Freedom.”

I frown, confused and freaked out. “Is that where he was? With a whore?”

Ryan lifts his head off the ground to glare at me. “You think a girl did this to me?”

“Why not?”
I ask with a shrug. “I could.”

He laughs, dropping his head hard against the wood floor. “Touché.”

“You’re not really a girl, though,” Trent tells me.

Ryan laughs again.

“Wow, Trent, thanks for that,” I say sarcastically.

“I mean, you look like one right now, for sure,” he says, his eyes falling down my body exposed by the drooping blanket. I snatch it up closer around myself, glaring at him as he grins. “But
your average girl couldn’t survive like you have.”

“Is that a compliment?”

He shakes his head, stepping closer and forcing me away from the door. “Nope. Not everything is a compliment or an insult, Joss. Sometimes things just are what they are.” He steps outside into the hall. “Take care of our boy. I’ll see you two in the morning.”

“That guy is…” I begin, dropping the
board across the door yet again. I don’t know what else to say. He’s not annoying, but he’s not fun either.

“He’s Trent,” Ryan mumbles, still flexing his leg.

“Exactly.”

And suddenly Trent’s parting philosoph
y lesson makes a world of sense. I decide he’s annoying after all.

“So what happened?” I ask Ryan, plopping down on the floor beside him.

He lowers his arm, giving me a good look at his face in the moonlight. It’s covered in small cuts and tiny abrasions. He’s bleeding a little everywhere. Walking through the streets like this, casting out that living, bleeding scent, was insanely dangerous. It makes me grateful for the dark undead blood splattered over his shirt and coat. At least he had some camouflage.

“
I fought in the Underground tonight.”

“You’ve done it before, haven’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“How often?”

He looks away, staring straight up at the ceiling. He looks exhausted, beaten. I have a hard time believing that this is what winning looks like, but he’s still alive so it must be.

“Not as often as my brother. He did it a lot. He was kind of a legend.”

“Is that how people know you there?”

“
Partly. I haven’t fought since just before he died. He didn’t want me to. He fought for our gang as a way of making money. To earn favors from other gangs. It’s dangerous though.”

“Yeah, I imagine. You’re fighting Risen for fun. What if you’d been bitten?” I look over his body, finding more black tar blood as I search. “What if some of this has gotten inside you?”

“That’s not why it’s dangerous.”

“Ryan, you could die. It’s a big, big part of it.”

I feel panic begin to well inside of me as I look down at him, busted and bleeding. There’s Risen gore all over him, more of it by the minute it seems like, and I’m flashing back to all the times I’ve had to put a gun to someone’s head and lay them down just before the fever took over. Just before they stopped being them and started eating me.

I reach for his shirt, tugging it up toward his face. “We have to get you out of these clothes and cleaned up. You can’t sit in them
acting like the blood isn’t seeping into you.”

“Whoa, Joss, slow down,” he says, trying to stop my hands.

I won’t have it. I slap his hands away and yank on the collar of his shirt, pulling him up into a sitting position. His face is close to mine, his breath on my skin and the sheen of his blood is reflecting bright in the moonlight. In my watery eyes. I yank on the hem of the shirt, pulling it up forcefully. This time he lets me. He puts his arms over his head and lets me carefully peel it over his face, taking extreme care not to let the outside of the saturated shirt touch his vulnerable, open skin.

When I toss it aside, already dreaming of the fire I’ll burn it in, I feel his eyes on me. Watching. Worrying. I refuse to meet them. Instead
, I look over his now exposed chest, arms, stomach and shoulders, searching for any kind of cut that could have left him exposed. But there’s nothing. He’s perfect. He’s safe.

He’s an idiot.

I sit back hard on my heels. My eyes are still burning, but I let him see.

“Never again,” I tell him firmly.

“I’m fine. You can see it, I’m fine,” he says calmly, smiling and reaching for my hand.

I jerk it away. “This time. This time you’re fine. But what about next time? People die doing this, don’t they?”

“Yeah,” he admits quietly, his smile gone. “They do all the time.”

“Never again,” I repeat.

He sighs as he runs his hand over his hair. “I have to. It’s what you need to get to The Hive.”

“We’ll find another way.”

“There is no other way.”

“You’re not worth it, Ryan,” I snap
. He looks at me, surprised by my tone. “No matter what I need, you’re not worth it. You can’t come bursting in here, scribbling your gibberish all over everything, making me give a crap, then go out there and die. You
can’t
.”

“Hey,” he breathes, reaching for my hand again.

And again, I jerk it back.

“Hey,” he repeats, this time forcefully. Like a scolding. “Give me your hand, Joss.
”

I
let out a rough breath, then try to smile at him weakly. “Just because I don’t want you to die doesn’t mean I want you to touch me.”

“You’re a massive pain, do you know that?”

I reach out, taking his one hand in both of mine. It feels less claustrophobic this way, having him pressed between my palms instead of being clenched inside his. I can handle this.

“I know that,” I agree, staring at his long, beaten fingers. “We need to clean you up.”

He stands, then tugs on my hands, trying to pull me up as well. I stay stubbornly seated, looking up at him.