Broken (9 page)

—
I’d made that walk with him before, but neither of us were stumbling—

—
They were kissing, deep, passionate, excited—

—
The way I’d never been able to with him for fear of his life—

And when they were inside, clothing was shed, and she halted, just for a second, her age showing in the crinkling of the crow’s feet around her eyes. Her voice was throaty as she broke away from kissing down his neck and chest. “You don’t have a girlfriend or anything, do you?” Zack paused, opened his eyes and looked down at her, and his mouth opened, but nothing came out. “I mean, I don’t care if you do—” she said and went back to kissing him just below the collarbone.

“
No,” he breathed at last, and she came up to lock lips with him. “I don’t have a girlfriend,” he said as they broke apart, and he ran his hands down her bare back, skin to skin. I watched them collapse onto the bed, in each other’s arms, watched them intimate in a way I had only been with him once, and closer than I had been able to achieve without hurting him seriously—

—
so many kisses, so much touch, his flesh to hers, no barriers between them—

I wanted to be nauseous, I wanted to be murderous, I wanted to intervene, to hit them both, to destroy the room around them, but I couldn’t. I stood there, watching, as ephemeral as the air, as they made love, slowly, passionately, her cries of pleasure echoing in my ears and giving voice to the scream of agony that wanted to claw its way out of the throat I didn’t presently have.

11.

I awoke in my own bed, a ragged scream on my lips that I killed as surely as I’d killed Parks and Clary. I fought for even breaths, slow, stable ones that didn’t have me gasping as I sat there. My bed stunk of sweat, as though I’d gotten in it after my fight with Clary instead of waiting until after I’d showered (which I had). I looked at the wrist that he’d broken and it pulsed instead of throbbed. All my pains had become aches in the aftermath of the fight, well on the way to being back to normal. Light streamed in through the curtains at the sides where there was a gap between them and the wall. I’d moved the armoire that used to block the window after I’d started making the house payments with my Directorate salary.

The sheets were wet around me with the sticky sweat of my skin, alive with the smell of that dampness, and I looked over the remains of my room. Other than changing the positions of the furniture so I could see out the window, all my stuff was still mostly where it had been. My minimal personal belongings.

The last remnants of my sheltered life.

The bookshelf was filled to the brimming with books, all the volumes I’d spent my time with when I wasn’t learning the basic skills mother expected me to pick up. There were novels, hundreds of them, all the books on which I’d based my outlook on the world when I wasn’t pulling it from the hour of TV I was allowed to watch every day. I got out of bed and wandered idly over, paging through the spines as I ran my index finger over them. Fantasy, romances, science fiction; I’d read them all. Mother used to bring home a crate of used books every month or two, and I’d go through them, reading them one by one. I’d have to give up a crate to get another, though, because she always claimed we hadn’t enough space to simply keep acquiring them. Once my shelf was full, I had to start cutting the ones I wanted to keep, until finally I had a shelf so filled with my favorites that every choice I made to give one up was as painful as saying goodbye to a dear friend. Every book I got rid of in order to add a new classic was a sacrifice. It had been the only way I’d felt emotions, other than through TV. It was the only way I’d felt connected to people. I was a mimic, and I tried to match how to feel with the way people felt in the stories I read and watched. I wondered how well it had translated.

Seeing the memories from Zack’s unguarded moments told me that it had not translated well at all. I’d been a freak from the beginning, ill-equipped to do anything but snarl at the people around me at the Directorate. I swallowed and felt that lump in my throat again. He hadn’t ever really been ‘into’ me. He was paid to feign interest by Old Man Winter.

I felt the burn of bile in the back of my throat.

That’s right, Little Doll. Now you see how the old frost giant pushed you all along, manipulated you, played games with you
.

“
You’re about as helpful as a paddle made of papier-mache, aren’t you?” I sighed and closed my eyes.

He played with the Little Doll, with her emotions
—

Yes
, Bjorn agreed,
this is the way of Erich Winter, and has been for as long as I have known him, all the way back to
—

“
I get it, you’re all old, you’ve known each other since thousands of years ago. Congrats on being part of the world’s first gentleman’s club—you know, absent any actual gentlemen. And honestly, probably absent any of the other things you’d find in a more modern gentleman’s club, like—”

Please
, came Gavrikov’s voice,
I must know more about my sister
—

“
Oh, shut up about your sister already,” I said, and Bjorn and Wolfe chorused their agreement. “No one cares about Kat, or whatever her name was before she evacuated her brain.” I felt the burn of anger. “She’ll be lucky if I don’t test Charlie’s advice about finding out what a Persephone’s soul tastes like when next she crosses my path.” My skin burned and I felt a strange desire to act out my words. “I wonder if she’d be all peppy like Kat if I drank her up or if she’d be like the slutty, grave-robbing whore that she is now—”

There was a flare in my head that felt like pain, like someone lit a pole on fire and thrust it into my ears, and it felt like fire burned, flashing around me as I fell to the floor. I gasped at the agony in my head, and only managed to open my eyes again after I felt Bjorn, Wolfe and another presence in my mind somehow battering Gavrikov to the back of my head, where he could do no harm. I lay on my bedroom floor, staring at the ceiling, as the thought of flame receded to the back of my consciousness. I could almost smell smoke somewhere in the distance.

Are you all right, Little Doll?

“
Stop frigging calling me that,” I said, massaging my forehead with my thumbs. “I have a name.” There was a pause, silence, and I sat up. I clenched my eyes shut and let the hammering in my temples subside. There was a beep somewhere in the background and my eyes opened just wide enough to realize what it was. I crawled my way to the bed and reached up on the bedside table. The phone’s screen flared to life at the press of a button and I saw I had a new text message.

Downtown, the Carver Building. #2883. Will be there tonight after 7 p.m
.

I read it twice, just to be sure, then turned off power to the phone. “Thanks, Kurt,” I whispered to myself.

You’ve done so well thus far, Little Doll
—

“
I told you to stop calling me that.”

—
such fine work, what you’ve done. With the metal man especially, such a tasty way to beat him. Wolfe could not have planned it better himself
—

Very well thought out
, I heard a grudging respect in Bjorn’s tone, and it made me hate myself.
Killing a stoneskin is not easy, not even for a succubus
.

“
I don’t know what I’m doing anymore,” I said and let the weariness settle over me. I saw Parks’ face in my mind, after I’d shot him, how deformed and destroyed it was after I’d sent bullet after bullet through it, the gray hair and beard drenched with blood and flecked with tissue. I envisioned Clary, and felt a stir within as Wolfe trilled with pleasure and I tingled with disgust. All I could see in the water was red, blood floating in wisps like threads weaving their way through it in the dark of the streetlamps; it was more black than anything, but my mind painted it the way I knew it was, crimson, violent, horrible. Just like what I’d done to them.

“
Zack never loved me,” I whispered. “He was just doing what Old Man Winter told him to do.”

All the more reason to make Winter pay
, Wolfe said.
The Little Doll was hurt by him and hurts even worse now. Jotun must have known that the Little Doll would find this out; he rubs your face in his cruelty, taunts you with it, as if to show her that no one has ever cared for her. Winter orchestrated a great show to fool her, to play with her, to make her do his bidding
…

Even at our height, with the most ruthless Primus at the head, Omega would not be so vicious
, Bjorn said, and I could almost see his smile of self-satisfaction.
Killing is not cruel compared to what he has done to you. A beating is physical; it fades in time. We are metas, we do not scar like ordinaries—like humans do. But this, what he has done … this will leave marks. He tries to make you more like him
—

“
More like all of you,” I said, and I knew it was true. “He wants me to kill.”

But surely he can’t think the Little Doll can kill him
, Wolfe said.

“
He thinks I’ll try.”

But he thinks the doll will fail
, Wolfe hissed,
and that makes him a fool. Little Doll is stronger than Winter realize
s. I felt the burn in my guts, like ground glass was moving inside me, shredding my insides, then I felt it stop as though it had come up against a wall of concrete.
Little Doll will show him; she won’t stop. Jotun probably thought the Little Doll would fail by coming at him with all his bodyguards around to save him. She won’t, she’ll remove them one by one until it’s just him and her, and then we’ll show her how to strip the frozen meat from his bones, oh yes, we will
—

There was a cry inside me, a howl of pure emotion whose source I knew. “Shut up, Zack,” I said. “You don’t even have the guts to speak to me, you just keep letting your sad and guilty memories float to the surface of my mind while I sleep.” I grabbed the bed and used it to pull myself up. “I don’t need your advice anymore. I’m not doing this for you, not now.” I pictured them in my head, M-Squad and Winter. The two of them that were dead and the three I had left to go. I lifted my cell phone and stared at the blank screen. “It’s for me, now. I’m doing this all for me.” I looked toward the window, the barest hint of light creeping from behind the curtains, letting me know it was day outside, even though the room remained in shadow. “And I don’t really care what happens after I’m finished.”

12.

The cold night air was agonizing as I pushed open the heavy glass and metal door with a click and made my way into the residential apartments. The security man rose to greet me with a smile as I came in, the autumn-winter air stuck in my nose. It was below freezing again, not that I cared. I huddled within my coat less for warmth than to conceal what I was carrying beneath it. The first whiff of the building’s heating system was sweet, a new smell for a new building.

The lobby was all sleek lines and classic styling; it reminded me of a photo I’d seen of a hotel lobby in Vegas. Behind the desk the security guard smiled and I feigned one back as I approached his desk. The sidewalks were empty at this time of night, especially on a weeknight.

“
Cold out there?” he asked, with a knowing smile.

“
It’s cold everywhere,” I replied, letting mine fade as I reached the front of the desk. “Hi. I’m Sienna.” I stuck out my bare hand as though for him to shake it.

He looked at me curiously for a moment before grasping my outstretched hand and giving it a shake. “Nice to meet you, Sienna. I’m gonna need to see your I.D. to let you through, or else call the apartment you’re going to in order to get their approval to send you up.”

“
Nah,” I said, and held onto his hand. His palm was warm, his dark skin contrasted against my snow-pale hands. “I’m just here to introduce myself. I wouldn’t want you to go waking anybody up.” I gently pumped his hand, as though I’d forgotten I was shaking it.

He drew his eyes down, and gave me a faint look as though I were crazy. “Well, Miss—”

“
Sienna,” I corrected him.

“
Sienna,” he said, and the first notes of him humoring me crept into his tone, “as nice as you are, if you’re not here to see someone, I’m afraid I’m gonna have to ask you to move along.” He tried to pull his hand away but failed as I held it tighter.

I pretended to think about it as he made another effort to get his hand free of mine and failed. His eyes widened and I knew the first stirrings of pain would be hitting him right about now. “I don’t think so,” I said and eyed his nametag, “Phil. Phil’s a nice name.” I held his hand tight, and he made a serious effort to pull away and failed, his eyes growing large in desperation. They were brown, like Zack’s. “Listen, Phil,” I pulled his arm, and he grunted in surprise as I yanked him forward, over the desk. I heard his knees hit the edge on his side and I knew he’d be feeling it in the morning, “I told you, I don’t want you to wake anyone up. I am here to see someone, someone who doesn’t want to see me, and I just … don’t need any attention. Phil’s eyes were wide, now, and I brought my other hand down to his cheek and stroked it with a sort of reassurance I didn’t feel at all, even as he was squealing. I ignored every sound that came out of him as his eyes fluttered in pain.