Beyond These Walls (6 page)

The guard’s voice shook when he asked, “Is she one of yours?”

The man nodded.

“I didn’t know, Jake. I swear it.”

“Now you do.” He let the guard go. “From now on, ask first before you touch my bounty.” Jake grabbed my arm and dragged me toward the gate. His fingers dug into my skin, branding my flesh with bruises. I didn’t fight him. Nope, not when each step he took brought me closer to home.

We stepped through the gate, his long strides forcing me to jog to keep up, or face the humiliation of being dragged through the streets by a hunter. I chose to speed up. The blank stares of homeless mutants, their skin riddled with open plague sores, followed me as Jake pulled me down the street.

I stumbled again, but stayed on my feet. He didn’t look back. Enough of this, I thought, twisting from the hunter’s grip and preparing for battle. My fists jerked upward, and I positioned my body in a fighter’s stance, low to the ground, feet spread for balance.

“Easy girl.” Jake stopped and raised his hands. “I saved your ass, don’t make me regret it.”

I snorted. “You saved the guard’s ass. Not mine.”

He laughed. “Perhaps.”

“Why?” I tilted my head flipping through my mental rolodex for reasons why a hunter would bother to save me. Hunters did nothing without some sort of reward, whether it be money or sex. Since I’d spent my last hundred and fifty on a hooker dress, his preference seemed obvious. “I’m not a nightcrawler, you know. Only one vagina. Sorry to disappoint.”

“Darling,” he drawled. “You sure know how to sweet talk a man.”

“But you’re not a man.” My eyes slid over his body, noting the expensive gun strapped to his belt and the black leather jacket protecting his torso. Images of old western gunslingers and Hell’s Angels came to mind. “You’re a Hunter.”

Hunters played a dangerous role in human and mutant society, living in the shadows between both worlds. Their mutated genes provided them with the ability to track and capture wayward mutants, for a price. One all too often paid for in mutant blood.

“And you’re worth ten thousand dollars. Dead or alive.” He raised an eyebrow, which emphasized his blue eyes. “Which so happens to be the going rate for a mutant who infiltrates the human world. Not to mention one who assaults a prominent member of Resden Enterprise.”

“And here I thought I was special.” I palmed my knife, ready for action. Quinn might’ve bested me tonight, but I’d never let some guy who looked like the frontman for the Village Mutants do the same. “Are you going to turn me in?”

“Are you going use that knife on me if I try?”

I nodded.

He shrugged. “Guess not then.”

“Why?”

“Ten grand ain’t worth it.” Shoving his hand into the pocket of his jacket he pulled out a business card. “Here.” He flicked the card at me all the while keeping a good three feet from my strike zone. The card landed face up on the concrete between us. I scanned it, memorizing the etched words.

Jake McClain. Mutant Hunter.

“Give me a call,” he paused, his eyes roaming my body, “after you clean up some and I’ll buy you dinner.”

Son-of-a-bitch. Did this Hunter just insult me? “That’ll be a cold day in hell.”

“Aw, come on.” He shot me a grin, white teeth sparkling in the moonlight. “I figured a girl with hair like yours could take a joke.”

“You stupid, hunting piece of—”

The buzz of a HOA helicopter roared overhead, its search light sweeping the area around us. Jake glanced up, all humor draining from his face. “I’d love to stick around and chat…”

I didn’t stay around for him to finished his sentence. My feet dug into the pavement, and I ran four blocks to the safety of my apartment, and the embrace of a scalding hot shower.

Chapter 11

“Nobody?” I poked my head through the hole in the front door of my apartment. The living room looked exactly as I’d left it, free of reptoe-parts and giant cyclops. I unlocked the door and stepped inside. The air smelled faintly of sulfur or maybe it was rotting eggs. I took another sniff and realized the stench was coming from me.

I stripped off the nightcrawler’s dress and rushed naked down the hallway, and into the bathroom. As I stepped under the hot spray of the shower my mind flashed to the mysterious hunter, Jake McClain.

Every instinct warned the hunter was bad news. In more ways than I could imagine. And I had a pretty vivid imagination. McClain was the kind of guy that went straight to a girl’s thighs. But I couldn’t get him out of my mind. There was something about the curve of his lips, something dark, hard, and deadly.

Not that I had a death wish, but the tiny red bump inside the crook of my elbow warned I didn’t have much time left either. The plague was upon me. Its toxic bacteria slowly infected, and ultimately would destroy my cyborg-like cells.

Most plague victim’s, like my mother, died within a few months of contracting the deadly disease, but I had a few years left, years of suffering, years to watch the plague steal my friends, family, and eventually my life.

Just like my father.

I shook my head, warding off thoughts of death and disease. I had too much left to do. Stopping Quinn and destroying his mutant vaccine came first on my list.

A knock echoed on the bathroom door. The razor in my hand slipped, slicing a six-inch gash across the top of my thigh. Blood spurted from the wound staining the water swirling down the drain pink. “Ow. Fuck,” I yelped.

Nobody burst in, his fists raised and ready for battle. His eye scanned the room, and for the barest of seconds, he focused on my naked blood-slicked leg. “I see you survived the visit to dear old granddad’s.” Shaking his head, he added, “Only to succumb to the dangers of the personal razor.”

“These things are hazardous.” I wrapped a towel around my body and gestured to him with the razor. Light red droplets of blood splattered the tile near his feet. “They should put a warning label on the package.”

He tried to do an eye-roll. It came off more like a wink, but I got the point. “So what happened?” he asked.

“Same old story. Girl meets grandpa. Girl shoots ex-lover. Girl runs home like a coward.” I shrugged. “Nothing to tell, really.”

Nobody’s eye widened until it covered most of his forehead, but his voice remained a calm baritone. “Sounds fun.”

I threw the bar of soap in my hand at him. It sailed past him and out of the open door. He followed the soap from the bathroom, leaving me to dry off. Once I was dry, clean, and wrapped in a terry-cloth robe, Nobody handed me a clean pair of black cargo pants and tank top. My pink combat boots followed.

“Thanks,” I mumbled.

Nobody grabbed a brush from my nightstand, handed it to me, and laughed as I tried my best to calm my wayward curls.

“How is it that you can field strip a nine-millimeter in nine seconds, but can’t manage a few curls?” He grinned at my sad attempt and then finally handed me my skullcap. I dropped the brush, smashing the cap over my hair.

“How is it that I’m still hanging out with you.” I shrugged. “You’d think I would’ve learned my lesson by now.”

“I’m endearing.” He winked, his thick lashes sweeping across his nose. If he wasn’t seven feet of moronic muscle I might’ve forgot his lame attempt at joke and told him how much our friendship really meant. But like in a marriage, sincerity ruined friendships, so I kept my mouth shut.

“Okay. Enough banter. Spill it,” he ordered. We sat on the edge of my bed, the warm spring night settling around us as cricket-mutants as big as rats chirped from the street below.

I sighed. “When I got to Resden I met with my granddad for a few minutes. He waxed on about me taking over the business, and how he regretted his part in the mutant wars.” I shook my head. “I wanted to believe him.”

“I know.” Nobody lifted my hand in his. His skin felt warm and safe. For the first time in two days I relaxed but he ruined the moment by saying, “Now jump to the good stuff.”

I rolled my eyes, a move that drove one-eyed giants crazy. “I ran into Quinn by accident. He’s working for Arthur as some sort of researcher. They’re developing this vaccine…”

“A vaccine for what?” Nobody’s fingers tightened against mine.

“To eradicate mutant genes.”

He nodded as if he’d expected my answer. “So it’s true.”

“What is?”

Dropping my hand he rose from my bed and turned his back to me. “There’s been a lot of activity on the mutant boards. Some hacker named Mutant L has been posting all sorts of warnings about a vaccine.”

“So who is she?”

“She?” His eyebrow shot toward his hairline.

“Yes, she.” Feminine satisfaction hummed inside me. “A guy wouldn’t use an initial. Only chicks do that.”

“Why?”

“It adds an air of mystery?”

Nobody shook his head, and I relented. “Look through the mutant phone book sometime. Single women living alone do it all the time,” I said. “It’s a safety thing.” Not that it worked but a false sense of security went along way when you lived behind the wall.

“It doesn’t matter.” Nobody stroked his chin. “Mutant L knows something. At first I thought he,” he paused, “or she was some random crackpot. I tried tracking the IP address and it led nowhere. That got me thinking…”

“You think Mutant L is part of the Resistance.”

“Am I crazy?” He paced around my bedroom. “There’s no Resistance, right? Hasn’t been one since Calvin died. So what’s going on?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know, but if there is a Resistance, we have to uncover them before the HOA finds them, or us.”

The words had barely left my mouth when a spotlight, so intense it brought tears to my eyes, filled my bedroom. The whooping of an HOA helicopter followed the light.

“Too late,” Nobody said, tossing a duffle bag filled with ‘on the run’ essentials like ammunition, knives, and bubble gum at me. Shouts from armed HOA agents, and the heat of metallic bullets chased us through the hole in our apartment floor, and into the murky sewer below.

Chapter 12

“Jesus, you stink.” Nobody waved a hand in front of his face. “What’d you land in? Gnome piss?”

My lips curled into a snarl. “Let’s talk about who you landed on, shall we?” I groaned, brushing off a Nobody’s sized boot print from my lower back, and something that smelled an awful lot like rotten meat.

Reaching for my hand, Nobody smiled and helped me to my feet. Above our heads, the sounds of agents, helicopters, and gunfire erupted. Down here in the sewer though, the only noise was the rapid pounding of our hearts.

“That was close,” I said.

He didn’t bother to answer instead he waved his hand around the sewer. “What now?”

I shrugged, contemplating our next move. Miles of underground pipe and tunnels surrounded us, each with a unique set of problems. If we went north, we risked entering the Reptoe’s territory and I wasn’t in the mood for another reptilian smack down just yet.

The same problems existed south and west of our tunnel, but to a lesser degree. Fey-blood suckers, much like mosquitoes but a million times bigger, hungrier, and meaner swarmed the southern parts of the sewer, feasting on the blood of those stupid enough to drop in without a can of bug spray. I checked our duffle bag. No Fey Repellant. Shit.

I glanced to the west.

“No way in hell.” Nobody shook his head. “I’d rather risk a Fey bite.”

I winced, picturing my last encounter with the green-scaled momma-boys known as the Alligator People who lived in the western tunnels. Flushed down the drain by their human owners, they sought sympathy for their plight from whoever passed their way. Which in itself didn’t sound all that bad until you spent eight hours listening to a dude with razor teeth and abandonment issues complain about the cramped size of today’s drainage pipes.

“East,” we said at the same time.

Together we turned east and headed toward Ivan’s Lair, Liquor Emporium, and Tax Accountancy. Ivan would know all about the Resistance. Of course, he wasn’t about to tell us shit.

Not without a fight.

Growing up, every year I’d asked about the mysterious group of rebels who fought for truth, justice, and the mutated way. And every year when I posed the question Ivan turned a shade of lavender unknown to the color wheel and told me to go muck out the fairy cages.

Most of my teen years were spent cleaning out those cages, but I still wanted to know the truth about the Resistance. At the time, my desire had bordered on schoolgirl obsession, but now, the fate of mutantity depended on my fantasy group of rebel fighters. If the Resistance didn’t exist, I was alone in this fight, the last rebel, but that wasn’t going to stop me.

About an hour after fleeing from the HOA, Nobody lifted me on his shoulder, and through the steel sewer grate above our heads. I sniffed the air. The stench of moldy beer and tax shelters told me we’d found the right place. I slipped through the grate and straight into a tiny fairy fist.

The blow sent me tumbling back into the sewer. I landed hard on the wet ground. Nobody stood above me, a grin on his lopsided face. My butt ached with a new arrangement of bruises, and for a second, I dreamed of a life without fairies, sewers, or overly amused cyclops.

“That looked like it hurt.” Nobody held out his hand, and once again, pulled me from the ground.

“Really?” I shook my head, sending drips of what I prayed was water spiraling around us. “Cuz I hardly felt a thing.”

Nobody laughed and motioned to the grate. “Want me to try?”

“I’d like nothing more.”

He hefted his large frame through the grate. From overhead the tiny screech of a fairy sounded, followed by a louder, more ferocious shout. A second later, Nobody fell back through the sewer grate, his eye swollen and red.

“Fucking Fairies.” He rubbed at his eye, and I fake coughed to cover a laugh. How many times had I come home with a fat lip or damaged eye socket, all on the account of some wayward fairy? They might look small, but they sure as hell packed a punch. They must eat their mutant Wheaties, I thought.

“I’ve got an idea.” I scrambled up the side of the sewer and waited for a fairy to approach the grate. My wait didn’t last long. If anything fairies had an insatiable curiosity that made them easy targets in the mutant wild, probably why most of them sat caged in fairy-fighting rings. Evolutional adaptation, my ass.