Bite: A Shifters of Theria Novel (21 page)

With the last of my pride trickling along the cement floor, I take off my second boot and my shirt. The subterranean chill nearly makes me re-evaluate my crude plan—crude plan, but good plan. I remember the man’s name. Eddie.

I remember three things about Eddie: he never questions Carmine Pesconi, he smokes menthol cigarettes, and he has a soft spot for whores. Not just any whores, human whores. It’s this third trait that will prove useful.

The tapping stops. “Are you done yet?” he asks. His shadow stands upright.

I sit down, away from my puddle, next to the wall of bars. “Yeah,” I say, hiding my hands behind my back. The makeshift handcuffs are open, a ring in each hand.

The man steps up to the bars, the key to my cell in his hand. He stops and stares at me, re-enacting the same confused glare from before. “What are you doing?” He scratches his scruffy cheek.

I look up at him. His judgmental glare makes my body feel broken and confirms that I’ve reached a new low. It’s hard to look him in his dumb, sunken eyes, but I know I have to. If I want to live, I can’t look away, not even for a second. “I can’t get my pants back on.” I continue to stare into his eyes.

“Why not?” he asks, reaching up and scratching his face again. I consider myself lucky that they sent their slowest henchman.

“I can’t seem to do anything with these handcuffs on my wrists. I’m only human, after all.”

His eyes light up as if a light goes off in his hollow brain. He shakes his head, refocuses, and looks around the cell. “Well, I’m not taking them off,” he says.

“Really?”

“Sorry.” His voice lacks both genuineness and sympathy as he unlocks the door.

“Maybe you can just help me get my pants back on,” I say, my eyes still locked on his.

He stops, his mind reconsidering. “What?” he says.

“Please?” I ask. My heart attempts to rat me out, rapidly clanging against my chest.

He looks at my chest, and then looks away quickly. He reaches up and scratching his scruff. “We should get going.”

“I can’t go anywhere like this,” I say, looking down at my bare legs.

His cheeks glow a shade of rose. He stares at my legs, considering the offer, considering any consequences—deciding if there are any consequences. His eyebrows rise and fall, and his head tilts from side to side, as if he’s considering the arguments from the little angel on his one shoulder, and the little devil on the other. He’s thinking, what do I have to lose? Then, his expression drops and he looks at me through squinted eyes. “What are you doing?” he asks.

“I just need help with my pants.” My eyes remain locked on target.

“No—don’t give me that. What are you up to? You think if you put out, I won’t bring you up to Mr Pesconi. That’s what you think, isn’t it?”

“What? No.”

“Yes. I’m not an idiot. You think I’m going to feel bad for you, and I won’t be able to bring you up to Mr Pesconi. It doesn’t matter what I think, you know. Mr Pesconi doesn’t care. If he wants you dead, he’s going to have you killed, whether you like it or not.”

“I never thought that.” I bite my lip.

“Nice try though. Get up.”

“Are you clingy?”

“Huh?”

“You know, clingy. Are you?” Goosebumps spread across my cold body; everywhere except my hands, which are hot and sweaty, struggling to hold onto the handcuffs.

He scratches his cheek. “No.”

“So why are you so worried that you’ll fall for me?”

“What are you talking about, now?”

“You said, you don’t want to sleep with me because you’re afraid you won’t be able to turn me into Mr Pesconi after.” I feel Freddie’s grin cross my face.

“I never said that.” He scoffs and shakes his head dismissively. “C’mon, get up.” I don’t.

“That’s exactly what you said.”

“No. I said, just because you put out, doesn’t mean I’ll think twice about turning you in.”

“Oh. I see.” I finally look away back down at my bare legs. I wait for him to catch on. After a few seconds, he does. His sunken eyes widen and his gaze turns inwards. “Well, can you at least help me with my pants?” I ask.

He remains still and silent, his glossy eyes remain inwards. He sinks slowly down to his knees and reaches for my pants. Then, he pauses. “What?” he says dumbly.

I lock my gaze back on his.

He shakes his head. “What are you doing?”

I look down at my toes. “I have—what—twenty minutes left to live? Ten minutes?”

“So?” His hands remain clenched around my pants, his eyes now locked with mine.

“I don’t want to…” I pause and bite my lip. “I don’t want to die a virgin.”

His eyes flash and his mouth falls open. “A—A virgin? You’ve never…”

I put on the most innocent smile I can muster, but even my most innocent smile feels like a shit eating, Freddie-grin. “Well?” I say.

After ten seconds of frozen hesitation, he lets go of my pants and crawls over my body. His eyes drift down to my chest, his mouth remains open. His long, dumb face leans forward. Somehow, his deaf ears can’t hear the church bell tolling in my chest. His lips press against mine. Ugh. We kiss.

His lips are dry. His tongue is quick to join in—as are his hands, which begin to caress my sides and fondle my tits through my bra.

“Ouch,” I say, muffled by his tongue.

He leans his head back, eyes still wide. “What’s wrong?” he asks.

“The wall is hurting my back.”

I can almost hear his brain buzzing. “Lay down,” he says.

“No. The ground is too cold.”

“Um,” he says, looking around the cell.

“Stand up,” I say, stumbling up to my feet, turning my back to the barred wall. He follows my command like a hungry mutt, and wastes no time wrapping himself around me, locking his lips with mine. His tongue is back in my mouth. My gag reflex amazingly remains dormant.

His fingers slither down the waistband of my panties and a shudder slithers up my spine.

“Wait,” I say.

“No. We need to hurry up,” he says.

“I can’t reach my bra,” I say.

Again, his brain stutters as he processes my request. “O—Okay,” he says, reaching around my back. His fingers fumble with my bra-clip.

No room for error, no second chances. I make my move. I’m blind, guided by instinct. As I close the rings of the cuffs, I can only hope they’re around his wrists. His expression drops and his head tilts. He doesn’t know what’s happened yet. I slip out from between him and the bars while his clunky brain makes sense of the events. He tries to turn to me, but the cuffs, wrapped around a crude iron bar, stop him. He gives the makeshift restraint another swift tug.

“W—What?” he says with dumb, glazed eyes.

I don’t stick around for a discussion. With my clothes back on, I run for the stairs.

“Hey! Wait! Come back here!” he calls out. His voice fades to nothing as I climb the stairway.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

REMEMBER THE RATS

I run up multiple flights of stairs, each with a platform and a door. Each door opens into a cement corridor, some with cells, some with rooms. None of the floors have windows, or maps, or signs, or anything useful. The staircase ends after six flights, never emerging from the cement underground. I have six choices—six doors leading down nearly identical corridors.

I slip through the top floor’s door. The hall is dark, with no doors along its cement walls. A dozen pipes run along the ceiling, all different shades of black and red, and all different sizes. I follow the pipes towards the end of the hallway and a featureless door.

What other option do I have? I enter the room. It’s a small boiler room. Damp, hot, and loud with a mechanical rumbling. All of the pipes from the hallway crisscross and disperse into various machines. Nothing is labelled but I recognize a few machines: the hot water heater, the water filter, and the air purifier… I’m wasting my time.

I run back down the long hallway, back to the stairway. I still have five other options. I push the door to the stairway open, and then I freeze. Door hinges squeal, a few floors below me, and echo up the stairwell.

“What’s taking so long?” a voice calls out, a few floors below.

“Not sure,” says another voice.

“Wait here while I check on ‘em.”

I peer over the railing. Two men in black coats are oblivious to my presence. As one man descends the stairs, the other casually leans over the railing. I can hear him chewing a gob of gum, tapping his finger against the iron railing. He looks up and I recede out of sight.

Shit. Fuck. Piss.

I know what I need to do. I’ve done it once before, when the cops busted our gang.

Our gang leader, Ivan Szorezki, a thin, meek-looking but tough-skinned Pole, called a meeting at our headquarters, the top floor of the old meat-packing facility on the south end of Ilium. Ivan called the meeting because he heard there was a mole in our group. It turned out, he was right.

He was the mole.

Once we were all in the building, police moved in. My friend, James, managed to sneak out before the gunfight erupted. He stole a cop car and actually got away. I ran to the basement and escaped through the vents, which I got into through the building’s air purifier.

Two members of my gang died in that gunfight; Ivan was one of them and the other was the guy who shot him. After that day, I decided: no more gangs. Not only did I lose my best pair of earrings, but I also ruined my best pair of Nudie Jeans and a cashmere sweater. I couldn’t sleep for weeks, tormented by the memory of those rats crawling all over my body. No more gangs. I was done crawling through vents.

Or so I thought.

Here I am, years later, loosening the faceplate of an air purifier with a hobnail, building up the courage to climb inside and face the rats I know are inside.

I hoist myself up and crawl inside of the machine. I shimmy the faceplate back into place before turning towards the ventilation system entrance. Before I can continue, I have to tear down a series of honeycomb filters, all blackened from years of dust and dirt and probably a good deal of rat shit.

The braces holding the unit up groan from my added weight. The flimsy aluminum casing buckles more with every inch I crawl forward. Humans aren’t meant to crawl through air purifiers. I always said I would sooner die than crawl through the vents again. But I’d rather crawl through the vents than let Freddie win. Using my hobnail, I unscrew the grate that separates the unit from the wall, and the building’s ventilation network.

The vents at the meat packing plant were labelled with floor numbers. The vents in the cement prison aren’t labelled at all. I’m a rat in a maze. Instead of the smell of cheese guiding my way, I have the smell of rats—rats I can’t see, but I can now hear chirping, pattering through the narrow airway.

I want to scream, but that would be suicide. Sound tends to travel well through air vents.

After ten minutes of blind crawling, I find the building’s massive circulation chamber. In the center of the chamber, six stories down, is a large spinning turbine. It pushes air upward, powerful enough to push my hair straight up, but not powerful enough to push my body up if I end up falling down towards its spinning blades.

Every ten feet above me is a narrow lip that hugs the chamber’s perimeter, and a narrow metallic bridge, without railings, that crosses the deadly drop. Between me and the ceiling are dozens of narrow ridges, too many to count as they fade into blackness. Across the pit is a ladder. I have to crawl the bridge. I wonder how many rats that turbine has chopped up?

I crawl out onto the bridge, clenching the ledges as the turbine’s strength eliminates my balance. My hands are slick with sweat and grease and rat shit from the vents. They say you shouldn’t look down when crossing bridges, but that’s difficult when the bridge you’re on is a grate, with more gaps than surface. Every five feet along the bridge’s sides, my hands meet with flanges, designed for the servicemen to tie their safety harnesses, so they don’t fall and get minced in the hungry turbine.

I laugh. Safety harness? Where’s the fun in that?

Once I reach the ladder, I stop to collect my breath and my sanity. I can hear Freddie laughing in the back of my mind, watching me crawl through the grease and the rat shit. I’d like to see him try to break out of a pair of handcuffs, seduce his way to freedom, squeeze his body through rat infested vents, and then crawl over an industrial turbine. My laughter intensifies. I think I’m losing my mind.

The image of Freddie trying to seduce Pesconi’s henchmen never leaves my mind as I climb the ladder.

Past three bridges, I come upon a door. It’s heavy, made from solid iron, built to keep the noise from the turbine inside the turbine room. I hesitate before opening the door, knowing certain death could be waiting on the other side. I might be blindly walking into Pesconi’s cruel hands.

But I need to keep moving. I can’t stop now. The image of Freddie returns to my mind, but this time, he’s on top of me, our lips locked, and his tongue in my mouth. It’s a lucid memory, complete with the smell of his cheap cologne, the taste of his cigarette-tinged lips, and the feeling of his rigid abs against my bare stomach. I push the thought away and open the door.

Unsurprisingly, the door leads into yet another cement corridor.