Rising Tide (23 page)

Diego starts nodding. “Then thank you again.”

I nod back. But the urge to run for the door remains.

“You know what?” Diego says. “I think this calls for a drink.”

“Absolutely,” I say, the urge to run suddenly forgotten. Then, “Can you drink?”

“We don't have a lot of fancy painkillers,” he says. “So I pretty much have to.”

Rosie brings in a bottle and some smudged glasses. She's not looking at me. Even if Diego seems okay with me, she is definitely not. I flash back to something she said to me a little while ago when we were looking for the
Cherub
. She knew what to look for. She told me the first time we had met that she had been looking for ways to take the
Cherub
down. If it became necessary. It gave me a shiver then and it gives me one now.

The liquor is brown, like whiskey. But it doesn't look like something from the Clean. “What is this?”

“Something one of our locals makes,” Diego says. He picks up his glass and turns it around, looking at the liquid inside. “He distills his own alcohol and even has some old oak barrels he found or bartered for. He ages it in those.” He raises his glass to me and Miranda. We follow suit. “To the
Cherub
.”

I toast, then take a sip. It's strong, almost creamy. Slightly sweet. There are definitely flavors I can't identify. “Impressive,” I say.

He nods.

Miranda raises her glass. “To Tamoanchan.” We all take a drink.

Then it seems like it's my turn. I raise my glass. Look at Rosie, then Diego, then Miranda. “To ending the Sick,” I say. It surprises me, but I realize that I mean it. Not just the Bug, not just Miranda's cure, but Valhalla, the raiders, Gastown, the death and destruction—all of it. Miranda catches my eye, a strange expression on her face, then we all take a drink. Mine is long and deep. I wipe my mouth with the back of my gloved hand.

We're all silent for a moment. Then Diego says, “So what's next for you two?”

I take another sip of this pretty amazing whiskey and then I shrug. “The Council isn't too happy with me right now. They even confiscated the ship we took from Mal.”

“Mal?”

“Oh, right.” I fill him in on everything that happened since we left him at Gastown, finishing with our days in quarantine after Brana and Lewis left.

Miranda chimes in when I get to the information that we got from Tess. “My friends are out there.” She shakes her head. “Possibly being tortured. Certainly being mistreated. I need to get them back.”

“Can you put in a word with the Council?” I ask Diego.

Diego looks at his drink and shakes his head. “The Council . . .” One large, brown hand curls into a fist. “Gastown screwed me.”

“Oh.”

He raises his head and meets my eyes. “I'm lucky I'm not in a cell right now. I think it's only because there wasn't an invasion that I'm not. As it is, they've cut me out.” He takes a drink of his whiskey. Finishes the glass and refills it. “They let me stay here, but I might as well be a prisoner for all they'll let me do.”

I hear Rosie make a noise, a growl or something, deep in her throat and she turns and walks out of the room.

“So we're all in the same boat,” Miranda says.

“Grounded,” I say.

We all reach for our drinks.

“Do you both have a place to stay?” Diego asks.

“I'm trying to head out to see Sergei and Clay,” Miranda says, “but they said I wouldn't be able to get a ship until tomorrow because of the patrols they're still running.”

I shake my head.

“Then you should stay here, with us.”

“Diego,” Rosie says from the next room.

“We have the room,” he says. “It's simple, but . . .”

“That would be great,” I say. I look to Miranda. She nods.

“Thank you,” she says.

“Diego,” Rosie repeats. “Can I talk to you?”

Diego gives me a look as if to say, “I'm in for it,” then stands up and leaves the room. I notice that the effort pains him, though he does his best to act as if it doesn't. We can hear their low voices in the next room, but I find I don't want to hear what they're saying. I know most of it. Rosie doesn't want us here. For a moment I think about telling him we'll find another place. But we have no other real friends here. No barter. And I want Miranda to feel safe for a night.

Rosie's voice raises and I hear the words “all that happened” and a few moments later, “ruined your reputation.”

I throw back the rest of my drink and only then realize that Miranda's way ahead of me—already halfway through her second glass. As usual. “This is going well,” I say.

“She'll get over it, Ben,” Miranda says.

“Maybe she shouldn't,” I say.

“She'll get over it,” Miranda repeats.

I nod, but I don't know that I believe it.

A few moments later, Diego returns to the room and leans against the doorway. “You can stay,” he says. “I'm sorry, we don't have a spare bed. We barely have beds ourselves, but we have some blankets we can lay down in front of the stove. You'll have to share.”

I look at Miranda and raise my eyebrows. She says to Diego, “That will be fine. Thank you.”

“Good,” he says. “Then we're all set.” He settles back into his chair and reaches for his glass. “Who's ready for more?”

“Me,” I say, perhaps a little too eagerly. I slide my glass forward. Diego fills it.

The three of us toast again wordlessly.

Rosie doesn't join us.

The blankets smell very clean, and we lay them on the floor in front of the stove. The stove is an interesting contraption, made of iron that was probably resmelted somewhere along the way. It burns wood, and a pipe carries the smoke outside. The island gets chilly at night, but the area around the stove is nice and warm.

I shed my jacket, then my shirt and pants until I'm in my underclothes. It feels strange to be so uncovered around other people. I feel vulnerable. But I also realize that for a little while I've stopped thinking about the Bug and being infected. I know that Miranda and I haven't been together the whole time but, and it goes against everything I've known and felt my entire life, I'm not worried about her infecting me. It's against all my instincts, but then they seem ridiculous right now.

So I slip under the blankets, and they feel warm and soft against my skin. Miranda likewise strips down to her underwear, a simple pair of underpants and a bra. They're from the Clean, I see. The elastic is loose and puckered, the color faded to a gray, but she's obviously kept them clean and taken care of them. I feel myself go hard at the sight of her so unclothed. It's not something I see very often.

Ferals don't count.

She slides under the blankets next to me and that hardness gets, well, harder. I didn't think my body could be hotter, but the temperature under my skin ratchets up another few hundred degrees. I can feel Miranda's presence next to me. It's like she's pulsing, giving off waves of force. I don't look at her. My mouth is dry, my teeth gritted together. I can smell the soft, homey scent of the blankets and my own sweat and Miranda's scent, the smell of her skin, and there's this maddening fuzziness in my head. My cheeks flush.

“Ben,” she says, and moves closer to me, leaning into my body. My arm goes around her and pulls her close, and that heat, that fuzz, intensifies. I feel like a metal cable vibrating, thrumming, at her touch.

“Miranda,” I say, and turn toward her. Her smell is all in my nostrils, her body against mine. I am almost blind and deaf and dumb. Some kind of wave rises in me, and as if we have no choice at all, my mouth moves forward, and hers does too, and we find each other, and our warmth mixes together. I don't know how I can be hard and liquid at the same time.

My thoughts disappear. Skin against skin. Lips on lips. What remains of our clothes slid and pushed away by fingers and toes and friction, glorious friction. I lose myself. The world comes together in brief moments—a glimpse of her light-brown skin, the hardness of a nipple under my fingers, then my tongue, her hand on my cock. But each moment is washed away by this intense feeling, this physical euphoria that rises from my center, up my chest, and into my neck and extremities.

Miranda climbs on top of me, and we move together, and I gasp and the whole world disappears and just . . . pleasure. Pleasure. Bliss. Ecstasy. And need. Building need. We're breathing hard and gasping and biting and kissing and sliding down this slope, and I feel it building and building and building and then, in a moment of startling clarity, I lift Miranda off of me as I come and my whole body shudders with her in my arms, and we lay, panting against each other, sweaty and, slightly later, serene.

For a short while, I lay there, trying to take all of this in. Trying to hold on to this small, perfect island of contentment in a dark and dangerous sea. Then, when I feel like I have it, I roll Miranda over and move down her body, my head ending up between her legs. A different kind of intimacy as I move my tongue, exploring Miranda's body, tasting her, feeling her move and hearing her gasps and moans. I listen for her sounds and respond to her movements, and she gets louder and faster—then her legs grip my head and she lets out a last strangled sound and then relaxes.

I crawl back up to her, and we fall asleep against one another. As I slip into that sleep, I think,
We're going to have to wash Diego's blankets
.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

FROM THE JOURNAL OF MIRANDA MEHRA

Ben and I had sex last night.

It's something that's been building for months, the physical tension, I mean, and I can say that it didn't disappoint. Ben was . . . Ben was passionate, and unrestrained in a way that surprised me. He can be so careful, so controlling—what comes from a life focused on survival—but I felt that he was just there with me, in the moment, and the world, the world he fears, stopped existing for a brief, glorious moment.

Only . . . it's more complicated than that. Of course sex is sex, and it doesn't always have to be something significant, but in this case there's a lot happening beneath the surface, a lot of emotions and feelings and . . . they're complicated.

I have to admit that I still haven't quite gotten over what Malik told me about their past. I'm sure Ben could explain it in a way that would make sense to me—and I know that he was a different person back then—but he left someone behind. Someone he possibly considered a friend. And that chills me. And though I tell myself that he's a different man now, that he was willing to sacrifice not just his ship but
his life
for Tamoanchan, I can't seem to forget that.

It's related, I have to guess, to the prison camp. To the idea of leaving people behind. And knowing that a group of my people, people I have worked beside as we try to figure out Maenad, are sitting in a prison camp run by our enemies. Who knows what they might be facing? Torture? Starvation? Executions?

I can't stop thinking about it.

It kept me awake. After Ben had fallen asleep, I lay in his arms for a time. But I couldn't sleep. I fell in and out. Like I was back on the ocean, in the raft, constantly juggled by the sea.

So when I heard Diego stirring, and saw him go outside, I followed him into the predawn air.

He looked like he was having a harder time sleeping than I was. He had circles under his eyes and a hollow, haunted look on his face. “Nightmares?” I asked.

He nodded, and one hand massaged the back of his neck. “It's like when I relax, suddenly I'm back there.”

Gastown.

He looked at me, his face so sad. “I see them . . . they're hovering over me.” He clenched his fists and turned away. “They have knives and clubs and . . .” He paused, a choking sound coming from his throat. “Sometimes they just have their fists. And I'm trapped.” He looked back at me, his eyes wide. “Not just in the dream. I'm there, lying in bed, and I can't move. I can't . . .”

I walked up to him and put an arm around him. “I'm sorry, Diego. I'm sure it will pass. In time.” That's what I said, but as soon as it came out, I realized how tepid it sounded. I have no idea of what he's going through. And while my specialty is biology, I know how much psychology can affect it.

“It's fine,” he said, pulling away from me. His face settled into a stony mask. I wanted to reach out to him, tell him it would be okay, but I was already feeling like a fraud. This was a disease I knew very little about.

“What are you doing up?” he asked, shifting the focus on me.

I hesitated. He had his own problems, but . . . I don't know. I told myself he might enjoy the distraction of someone else's problems. But maybe I was just being selfish? I needed to talk to someone and he had offered? So I told him about what was haunting me. “I need to get my people back,” I said. “And as soon as I can.”